OK, do you guys think that your pets know that you can’t see? Sometimes I feel like my dogs know it and use it against me lol. Cause my basset hound we let all the dogs out in the backyard in a fenced in area off the patio. Well, she is the only one that I have trouble getting to come in the house. She likes to go out and lay on the patio in the sun, and I think she knows that I can’t see where she’s laying down because if I call her over and over, she just won’t come and she’ll stay quiet.
Like I would go out and make her come in, but I can’t see where she’s laying down at to go do that and I think she knows it and uses it against me. Generally speaking my other three dogs come in without much issue. She’s the only one I have trouble with and she’s a great dog outside of this. I know this is crazy, but I thought it would be a funny question. Anybody else have a similar experience?

So I'm a sighted person and found this sub because Google had no answers 😅 Thank you so much for being willing to answer questions!

I was rewatching Daredevil season 1 (the 2015 show) and had a question. (For anyone unfamiliar with the show, the only context necessary in this case is that the main character, Matt Murdock, is a lawyer and is blind. He has no vision at all.) So, in the first episode, Matt invites Karen, his client, to stay the night at his apartment as hers is a crime scene. She asks for a shirt to change into and then changes her shirt in front of him.

It makes some logical sense, as the main reason people want privacy while changing is to prevent others seeing them naked, and Matt is blind and she knows that. But somehow it just felt weird to me. Like, I can't imagine changing in front of a man I'd just met, even if he couldn't see me at all. Like he'd still *know* I was changing, you know? What if he thinks I'm coming onto him?

Is it normal to change in front of a blind person, even if that person is someone you wouldn't change in front of if they were sighted? I guess it would also depend on the degree of vision impairment, but I'm asking based on a scenario where the person is completely blind, as in the show. Like, is this scene just added to build romance between them, or is that a thing people do in real life? How would you feel if someone changed in front of you and do people do it?

My vision deterioration is slow and so far steady - I went from 20/60 to 20/100 from April/May to June and I can see differences day to day.

The doctor I was seeing basically told me I was overblowing my vision changes and that I needed to stop going to the clinic every time my vision changed while telling me that vision "doesn't deteriorate that fast".

I was told to not come into the clinic til December and that the (bad) prescription he gave me "should hold out til then".

This is the only clinic I can travel to, and I've already switched doctors to not have that one anymore but I'm hesitating about going in before December since I have experience with doctors / hear about doctors blacklisting you for being a "difficult patient".

But, I am having little difficulties day to day that I recognize as my prescription starting to fail. I can't afford to go to the clinic so much but if I don't, then I'll just end up not functioning.

So I ask, for those with deteriorating vision, how much does it have to deteriorate before you decide to see the doctor?

OK, so I’ve always heard this thing that blind people struggle with sleep and can sometimes like get the time of day like day and night backwards, I do not personally have this trouble, but I also still have some eyesight. I have also never met anybody that has struggled with this either so I’m curious how common it actually is and what circumstances I guess might cause it?
If you do have it, how difficult is it to deal with and what ways do you work around it? And is there something else besides just vision that causes that specifically but still relates to lack of vision?

So I know it seems among us that are in here so far that Music is a common interest. So just as a casual thing, what is everybody’s favorite music genre or genres?
Also, if you have any favorite songs or artists put those down below as well?
For me, my favorite genre by far is country music, but I’m still pretty picky about it. And I listen to a lot of country music that probably doesn’t get played on the radio as well.
My favorite artists are Muscadine Bloodline, and The Castellows but they aren’t what you would call mainstream. If we’re going mainstream artists, then my favorites are probably Riley Green, Luke Combs and Ella Langley, I suppose.

So this is meant to be more of a fun topic but also I’m curious at the same time and I’m sure others might be as well. What are some of your favorite hobbies? Do you have or know of any hobbies you might specifically recommend to other blind people as well?
I know from what I can tell so far at least from other blind friends in here is that Music in some capacity seems to be a common theme. But maybe what are some of your other favorites, or do you have others that you might recommend to blind people specifically to try as they may find them easier or more interesting?
This is quite literally anything it could be just getting interested in a specific sport, or some sort of activity or something of that nature. Maybe this is a way that some of us discover a new thing we didn’t think of before.

To all potential askers.

Don't use AI to generate posts and comments or it'll probably be removed

Foumder of this subreddit doesn't like AI. Tbh I don't either.

So essentially this seems to be an anti AI space

OK, so I am mostly blind and want kids of my own pretty badly someday though I am only 22 and I am not in any hurry. Heck I’m not even in a relationship lol. However, having kids is something that I think about fairly often, and I know there are blind parents out there, so I’m curious how many of y’all actually have kids, or maybe want kids but don’t have any yet? I’d also be curious to know how old you are but that’s not a requirement more of a frame of reference for me.
If you do have kids, how many do you have? Or if you want kids how many do you think you would want and what factors do you think might change your mind on how many you wanted? Obviously, I know that last part is subjective to each person and probably drastically changes once you actually start living it and not just thinking about it.

To all the lovely blind ladies in here I have a question for you as I am curious and I hope this comes off correctly or makes sense. I have a feeling I might word this wrong lol.
Obviously, all of us have things that we struggle with that the average person probably doesn’t think twice about, but I know you ladies have a much different experience than what I would as a guy. So what sorts of things or experiences do you have that are a challenge or impossible compared to the average lady? And how do you overcome, work around or adapt those things?
They could be big or small things like the one thing to me that I would think of that comes to mind is like doing makeup or something I can imagine that’s probably a challenge? How do you do that and are there other things like that that y’all struggle with that most people wouldn’t think twice about?

Hi everyone 👋

I’m a student working on an assistive-technology project involving smart glasses for blind and low-vision users.

The original idea was pretty simple:

>

But the more I think about it, the more I realize there’s a huge problem with that approach:

I’m not blind. So how do I know which problems are actually worth solving?

I don’t want to build a pair of “cool AI glasses” that looks impressive in a presentation but becomes useless in real life.

I want to hear from the people who actually live with these problems.

🦯 Let’s start with navigation

We often hear about white canes, guide dogs, GPS, smartphone apps, and environmental sounds.

But what do these tools still NOT solve for you?

When you're walking somewhere, what is the moment where you think:

>

Maybe it's finding a specific entrance.

Maybe it's understanding what's happening in an unfamiliar building.

Maybe it's crossing a complicated area.

Maybe it's knowing whether you've passed the place you're looking for.

Maybe it's something completely different.

What is your biggest everyday navigation frustration?

And something I'm especially interested in:

👂 How important is sound to your navigation?

I've read and heard that environmental sounds can provide a huge amount of information when navigating.

So I'd love to know:

What do you actually listen for when walking?

Traffic? Footsteps? Voices? Echoes? Doors? Public announcements? Something else?

And would an AI device talking constantly be helpful or actually make things worse by covering up those sounds?

🤔 But here's the bigger question...

What if navigation isn't even the biggest problem?

Forget the glasses for a moment.

Forget AI.

Forget my project.

What other everyday problem caused by blindness/low vision frustrates you the most?

It could be something incredibly simple:

Finding something you've put down.

Reading a label.

Identifying an object.

Cooking.

Shopping.

Using technology.

School/work.

Knowing what's happening visually in a room.

Recognizing people.

Knowing which button or control you're touching.

Or something that people who aren't blind would probably never think about.

🔥 Here's what I'm REALLY looking for

Tell me about the small annoying problem that happens over and over again.

The thing that seems insignificant to everyone else but makes your day harder.

Those are the problems I'm most interested in.

And please don't feel like you need to give me “good ideas.”

I'd actually like to hear the opposite too.

Have you tried an assistive device that sounded amazing but was completely useless in practice?

What made you stop using it?

Was it inaccurate?
Too slow?
Too expensive?
Uncomfortable?
Too much audio?
Too complicated?
Not reliable enough?
Or did it simply solve a problem you didn't really have?

One last question:

If you could magically fix ONE problem in your everyday life with technology, what would you choose?

I'm not looking for a perfect answer.

I'm looking for the real answer.

Even if it's something tiny.

Because my goal isn't to make the most advanced glasses.

It's to find a problem actually worth solving.

Thank you to anyone willing to share. Every honest answer could change the direction of this project. 🙏

You're standing at a traffic light, waiting to cross the street, when someone comes up beside you.

Normally, they would not catch your attention. But then you notice the white cane and dark sunglasses.

A blind person.

And immediately, a stream of questions starts running through your mind.

Should I ask if they need help? Can they cross safely on their own? If I offer help, how should I do it? And what is actually helpful?

By the time you are halfway through that internal monologue, distracted from the podcast you were listening to a moment ago, the light turns green. You hear the sound signal at the crossing, and the blind person is already a few steps ahead of you.

If you have not spent time with blind people, this is probably a familiar kind of encounter: brief, awkward, and full of assumptions.

Three years ago, I decided to do something bold, maybe even a little reckless.

Without any prior experience working with people with disabilities, I started a company that trains and hires blind people as accessibility experts and provides accessibility services.

At the time, I thought I was mentally prepared. I had a team around me handling much of the operational work, so in the beginning I was at least one step removed from many of the direct interactions. But only for a while.

Sooner or later, you have to stop thinking about a topic and start being fully present in it.

I still remember the opening day of our first training program: a QA course for eight blind participants.

I was proud of everything. The team, the organization, the preparation, the countless small details we had tried to think through. I stood in front of the group, welcomed them, and started sharing some of the arrangements we had made for the venue.

One of those details was the coat rack.

We had put hangers in place, and on each hanger we had attached a paper Christmas decoration in a different shape. The idea was simple: one decoration would stay on the hanger, and the matching one would be taken by the participant as a token, so they could later find their coat easily.

I thought it was clever.

Then one of the women laughed and said, "Oh, that's so cute. But you know, we can easily smell our coats."

I was speechless.

It was funny, but it was also a real moment of realization for me. The solution had felt thoughtful from my perspective, but only because I was solving the problem from my own mental model, not from theirs.

>That was one of my first big lessons: I cannot understand blind people just by imagining their lives. I have to talk to them, ask questions, and stay open-minded long enough to realize how limited my assumptions are.

That mindset has shaped almost everything I've learned since.

The easiest metaphor I can use is this: it felt like entering a very different culture.

And I do not mean visiting a neighboring country where things are mostly familiar. I mean entering an environment where the norms are different enough that you become hyper-aware of your own behavior. You are careful not to say the wrong thing. You worry about offending people without meaning to. You second-guess ordinary habits.

That was my internal state in the first months.

Was that feeling entirely accurate? Probably not. But as a metaphor, it still works. Because when you step into a world you do not yet understand, the best thing you can do is stay consciously open-minded and ask honest questions.

>In other words: don't assume.

For example, one of the questions I genuinely worried about was this:

Can you say to a blind person, "See you again"?

When I asked my blind colleagues that, they laughed.

"Of course," they said. "Unless we see you first!"

That answer was useful, but only up to a point. The deeper lesson was not really about one phrase. It was about the danger of looking for universal rules where there often are none.

Blind people, like everyone else, are individuals. They have different preferences, sensitivities, communication styles, boundaries, and senses of humor. Some will care about certain expressions. Others will not. Some will want help. Others will prefer not to be helped unless they ask.

>Just like with anyone else, the answer is respect, curiosity, and attention.

Ask when you are unsure. If you make a mistake, apologize. Learn. Move on.

>That is not disability etiquette. That is human etiquette.

Another thing I have found unexpectedly difficult is reading emotions.

I consider myself a fairly empathetic person, but with many of the blind people I work with, I still sometimes struggle to understand what they are feeling in the moment. Maybe it is because facial expressions play a smaller role. Maybe it is because some people are simply very good at masking discomfort. Maybe it is because I am relying too much on signals I am used to reading in sighted people.

Whatever the reason, I have learned not to assume that if someone is quiet, they are fine.

One experience made that very clear to me.

Our team was attending an event where Access Drum had been nominated for Agent of Change (and we did win that night!). There were more than 100 people in the room. Everyone was talking. Emotions were high. There was excitement, tension, noise, movement, stories, applause.

At one point, I noticed that one of my coworkers seemed visibly distressed. She was shaking.

I went over to her and tried to understand what was happening. At first, she brushed me off. But it was obvious something was wrong, so I stayed with her and kept gently checking in.

Eventually, she told me she felt extremely uncomfortable and, if possible, wanted to go home.

Of course, I called a cab and helped her leave.

Only later did I fully understand what had happened. She had become so overstimulated by the environment that her body was starting to shut down. She was in real distress, even pain. But she also believed she needed to stay, because she was representing the company and did not want to let us down.

That hit me hard.

What I realized afterward was that we had failed to align properly on expectations. We had not made it clear enough why we were there and what was actually expected from each of us.

From my perspective, the event was simple: show up, enjoy the evening, celebrate the impact we are making, and go home proud.

But that context was not necessarily shared.

And that matters.

In Bulgaria, many blind people are still not well integrated into the workplace. Attending a formal event, networking in a crowded room, representing your company in a public setting — these are not experiences everyone has had the chance to build familiarity with. Something that feels routine to one person may be completely new, stressful, and high-stakes to another.

There is also a more practical layer to this.

For many blind people, orientation depends heavily on sound. In a crowded environment with dozens or hundreds of overlapping voices, that auditory map can collapse. What feels lively to a sighted person can feel disorienting, exhausting, and even frightening to someone navigating primarily through listening.

That means preparation matters.

If you are bringing a blind colleague into a busy event or unfamiliar setting, it helps enormously to explain in advance how the event will work, what is expected, how long it may last, what the space will be like, and where they can step away if they need a break.

It also helps to identify anchor points: a quieter corner, a known person, a clear routine, or a place where they can reset for a few minutes when the noise becomes too much.

>Sometimes inclusion is not about grand gestures.

>Sometimes it is about context.

>Sometimes it is about removing uncertainty.

And sometimes it is simply about understanding that what looks like confidence on the outside may still involve a huge amount of effort on the inside.

One final lesson has to do with the surrounding environment.

Going back to our first training program, one thing that surprised me was how quickly the blind participants developed a feel for the space around them.

We would describe the room to them — probably not very well — and then they would start exploring. They would find a desk with their cane, go back to the entrance, leave their jacket on the hanger, sometimes even leave the cane there, and then return to their seat with complete confidence.

I was amazed.

What I learned is that once a blind person has built a mental map of a space, consistency becomes extremely important. If you change the layout, even slightly, you are not just moving furniture around. You are changing the logic of the environment. That means a new learning process has to happen.

So if you are arranging an office or event space, one simple rule helps a lot: the fewer unnecessary changes, the better.

What may surprise many sighted people is just how confident blind people can become in a familiar environment.

Our office is in a shared workspace, and the bathroom is at the end of a long, straight corridor. One day I noticed that when one of our colleagues goes to the bathroom, she does not walk down the corridor.

She runs!

Yes, actually runs!

I always joke that one day she is going to scare the life out of someone. But the truth is, she is fully in control of her surroundings. If there is someone in the corridor, she will most likely hear them before they even notice her.

And honestly, every time I hear someone say that a blind person "cannot" do something, I think of that moment.

I picture them standing at one end of the corridor while my colleague comes charging down the other side with her cane and perfect confidence.

>That image captures something important: we are often far too quick to confuse lack of sight with lack of capability.

I could share many more stories, and there are many more lessons in them, but this article is already long enough.

So I will end with this:

Working with blind people has taught me to assume less, ask more, explain context better, and respect forms of competence that do not always look familiar at first glance.

If you have worked with people with disabilities, I would love to hear what you have learned too. And if you have questions, feel free to ask them in the comments.

I'm curious how many of you have guide dogs, where/when you got them, who trained your dog?

And any good guide dog stories you have!

Hi all-

I saw the mods post about doing intros. I'm sighted, but one of my best friend is blind. She refuses to answer my stupid questions (usually stuff like "how do you do (that) as a blind person?" Her answer is usually something along the lines of "I figure it out")

I also have so many questions for her about what was it actually LIKE going blind?!

For context, we went to high school and summer camp together. She has retinitis pigmentosa. She knew she was going blind at that time, but she could still see for the most part. Now she is pretty much full blind, but she can see lights. We now live a few hours apart in different cities, and I see her a few times a year. And we text back and forth a lot.

So I'm stuck lurking on Reddit because I have no life. Haha! It is cool to hear about blind people with so many different hobbies, etc

Personally, as a kid I thought it cool.

Now I think my cane would be the last coloured one I get. I can't be bothered to think up new colours

OK, so with the NFL preseason starting up tonight it got me thinking to all of the sports fans in here. How do you guys prefer to consume or view your favorite sports and what sports are you into?
Do you guys prefer watching them on TV, listening to the radio broadcast, if you have gone in person, how has that been for you? Or do you have any other way of consuming them that I might not have thought of or known about?

So this is meant to be more of a fun thing as again we like to have fun here as well, and I personally find these things funny at least I’m sure you guys do as well. So what are some of your funniest stories and interactions with sighted people?
This could be just a situation, something someone said or did to you, or as I’m about to explain in a second something you did or almost did to someone else or anything really…
I’ll go first I think this might be entertaining to some of you…

So when I was in middle school, I was in academic challenge, which was basically like quiz bowl whatever you wanna call it. It was a competition type thing and we had 6th, 7th and 8th grade all in this thing. We would also have matches at our school and then also travel to other schools for these. Each of our grades would go up and play a part of the match so it was split into three sections, and in this particular year, I actually happened to be the captain of my portion of the team. So we are at an away match in this particular situation, and I’m sitting with the rest of my team waiting, I’m in 7th grade, so we’re the middle part of the match, I get up from my chair go up to the table with the rest of my part of the team, we do our thing it’s all normal now here’s where it gets interesting…
So before I went up, I had tried to make it a point to remember where my chair was it was somewhere in the middle of the line of chairs, but it was at the front row of them where we are seated with the rest of our team. Well, when I came back to my chair after playing my portion of the match, I went to go sit down in what I thought was my chair and did not check first. What I found out later was that a poor girl who I kind of knew, but was a grade below me and a part of that portion of the team was actually in that chair, and thankfully, she had very quick reflexes and moved and jumped very quietly, so I never knew this until later, but I very nearly sat on her in front of an entire group and crowd of people lol
It turns out the chair that I thought was mine was actually the one next to where I sat down, but to this day, the thought of doing that absolutely horrifies me and also makes me feel like a complete idiot at the same time. I just didn’t see that she was in my chair or that I went to the wrong chair more like it.
So that’s my funny interaction and embarrassing, what’s yours?