Blindness Awareness: Blindness as a Strength, Not a Weakness

Over 250 million people in the world live with blindness or visual impairment. Yet, the world is still brimming with significant talent all because this population doesn’t let their condition hinder them.

This October, we celebrate their incredible existence. As we’re nearing Blindness Awareness Month, we at The Lit Perspective believe it’s high time to acknowledge the courage and awesomeness of the blind community. Despite being faced with a lifetime of distress, they still challenge and go beyond what they may be naturally and biologically restricted from. They undoubtedly deserve to be appreciated and understood through the unique perspective they share with us.

Let’s break down barriers and navigate their exciting and imaginative experience.

How Does Being Blind Affect Your Life?

Humans are visual creatures. When one of their primary senses, sight, is taken from them, how will they navigate life?

A massive part of blindness awareness is focused on highlighting how indifferent their lives are to normal people. They may have been born different, but blindness doesn’t stop these individuals from living life how they want it to be. Aside from the insufficiency or absence of their navigational ability, blind individuals have proven themselves capable of everything a sighted person can do. Whether cooking or traveling, they’ve shown how they can ultimately be independent.

Vision impairment may be removing one of people’s most fundamental functions—a supposed basic necessity to thrive in life—but this doesn’t take with it most people’s will to live.

Take it from author and then-documentary producer David Block, who, while born blind, proudly wore his condition and made it one of his strengths.

It’s Not Blindness, But a New Perspective

With multiple public and personal achievements under his name, David is a testament that blindness doesn’t automatically become a hindrance or a curse. Instead, it can be a new perspective built around what could’ve been inadequacy turned 360 and perceived as a source of hope.

This coming blindness awareness month, David Block is among the many figures the world needs to recognize. Symbols of pure grit, they overcame a consequential burden and came out on top of it.

They took what others would’ve deemed a limitation and used it to conquer life and find success. People like David are the odd man in a society filled with people taking pride and seeking nothing less than abundance. They learned to fight and make the most of what they have. Despite blindness being labeled insufficient, others even made it seem like they wouldn’t amount to anything with their condition.

Blindness may be a life filled with hurdles with sight being taken away from people. But this doesn’t mean the blind community automatically loses vision for their lives.

With the never-ending sympathy cards and wishful sentiments, blindness awareness may initially revolve around being kinder and more supportive to these individuals. But this concept also embraces the strengths they’re equipped with. In a world where their insufficiency has been constantly highlighted, let us dive deeper and look at their lives from an opposite perspective.

Beyond Blindness Awareness, We Must Empower

Blindness awareness is a consequential step toward embracing and helping the community flourish. But beyond recognizing their woes and assisting them with these, it’s also vital to become a guiding hand for them to find strength in life.

While it’s not foreign to find empowered individuals despite their visual impairment, many are still having trouble finding their power. Whether supporting their businesses and endeavors or helping them through their routines, many ways exist to encourage them.

Support Accessibility

One of the primary troubles the blind community experiences revolves around their independence. It’s one thing to feel almost inferior, but it’s another to depend on others’ help constantly. A way to build blindness awareness and empower the community is to allow them the freedom to explore life. This can be achieved by making the world friendlier to them.

They don’t always need someone to guide them wherever they go. Instead, they simply need to have machines or accessories added to the world to make it accessible.

Challenge Assumptions

As David Block has proven, the blind community is capable of the same or even more than its counterpart. One way to empower them is by challenging society’s perception of their capacity. This recognizes that often their limitations aren’t factual but are imposed by society based only on assumptions. People must accept what they know isn’t always accurate and find ways to challenge what they’ve long believed in.

Rather than thinking they know what the community is limited to, it’s best to realize that blindness is only one aspect of their lives. Despite their conditions, they can still be masters of other things.

Blindness awareness is essential, but going beyond recognition and empowering these individuals is an even better concept. We should learn to create a world where they can thrive and find success despite, like what David Y. Block experienced.

Read more of his life in his memoir Born Blind.