The world of the blind: what do blind people see? With a white cane over dark silhouettes: what it’s like to live as a blind person in a metropolis. Life of the blind.

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With this article I open a series of articles about the achievements of ordinary people who are among us. They are the same as us, they have the same desires and opportunities, they set the same goals for themselves.

Only to achieve them they need to put in a little more effort, it’s a little more difficult to overcome themselves, it’s a little more difficult to prove their right to.

And when it’s hard for me, when I give up and it seems that the movement towards the goal has stopped or even turned back, I remember these stories, these people, I feel ashamed of my weaknesses and I move forward further.

I hope they will help you overcome difficulties on the path to your personal success and give you a boost of energy.

A loved one told me this story, coming one day after a lecture with great enthusiasm. We were sitting at a lecture in the library for the blind, he said, the lecturers replaced one another.

It was very interesting. Among the lecturers, a young man in a neat, elegant suit was waiting to speak. He didn’t stand out among the others in any way and we didn’t pay any attention to him at all, but then it was his turn.

He stood up and confidently walked to his place in front of the audience and told us what possibilities of modern technology exist for blind and visually impaired people, and specifically about the possibilities in the Internet. At the same time, he actively and deftly showed how his own personal gadgets work.

Then he had to show how a desktop computer works. He walked into another room and confidently sat down at the computer and very quickly, sliding the fingers of his right and left hands over the keys, walked through various sites, showing us Internet resources for the blind.

How blind people live. Blindness is not a hindrance to success

Our surprise was great when we realized that Sasha, that was the young man’s name, was himself completely blind, that is, he could not see anything. He doesn’t even sense light, that is, he can’t approach the window based on the light source, only by hearing and with the help of a cane.

What does a blind person see? Try it, blindfold your eyes with a thick cloth, and you will understand how a blind person feels. Black haze.

Somewhere in Europe there is a restaurant where people sit and try to eat in complete darkness.They say few people survive until the end of the meal, but Sasha lives like this all the time.

We were shocked how he walked alone, without the help of other people. Our surprise became even greater when we learned that he lives very close, at the other end of our city of a million people, and every day he travels from home to work with two transfers.

How he does this is beyond my comprehension. We were just complaining to each other about how hard it was for us to get to the lecture venue in the cold, how slippery it was, how hard it was to walk over the snowdrifts after an overnight snowfall.

How could he, a blind man, overcome all this? Our complaints now seemed ridiculous to us. Everyone became quiet and began to listen to Sasha’s story with respect.

Life of blind people. The story of a blind guy

Sasha went blind at the age of 12, after an absurd accident when he was playing with firecrackers with other boys. An explosion occurred and Sasha received severe burns to both eyes.

Along with his vision, he lost two fingers on his right hand. The question arose of how to live further. Together with his parents, he decided not to give up, but to become an educated person and take advantage of all the opportunities of modern civilization.

“Yes,” says Sasha himself, it was very difficult. At first, I was completely attached to my parents. They met and escorted me to and from school.

But by the age of 16, I realized that if this continues, then I will remain attached to someone, will not be able to live my own life, become independent and will not achieve success.

I set myself , achieve everything that ordinary people want to achieve and help other blind people achieve their goal. I decided to start with the simplest goal for all other children, but very difficult for me - to become a person free in my movements.

And one day, getting up early in the morning, while my parents were still not up, I quietly got ready and went to school on my own, which I had never done before. As it turned out later, my mother heard everything, but, understanding my idea, she made an effort and did not stop me.

She was just watching me from the window. This was also a victory for her, because it is very difficult to let go of your loved one in such a situation, to understand and give him the opportunity to go towards his goal of achieving success.

Without disturbing me, my mother supported me in difficult times.”

In front of Alexander there was a picture, like a photo, of what he would like to achieve and he decided to go to this picture, to this happy photo. Blind people dream differently than sighted people; their dreams seem worthless to healthy people.

And for them, just walking down the street is akin to a feat.

Willpower. Life of a disabled person and life with a disabled person

Sasha reached school. This was his first small victory, his personal success, the first step in his long and complex ladder of success.

But I wasn’t going to stop there, Sasha continues, I’ve always been fascinated by computer technology. I spent a lot of time at the computer while I was sighted.

And I entered the Institute of Information Technology and graduated from it. Became the chief IT technology specialist in a library for the blind. I also work on the Internet, using its enormous capabilities.

Recently I got my wife involved in this. By the way, she has a webinar this evening, he admits. In general, she is a massage therapist, but she does not work in her specialty yet and I attracted her to .

Very convenient. She sits at home, but does not turn into a housewife, but works and feels confident. Well, that’s the answer, we thought, probably his wife is helping him after all. But, to our greatest surprise, it turned out that the wife is also blind and they live separately from their parents.

By the way, we earned money for the apartment ourselves and bought it. They also recently had a child. He is sighted, and of course, his parents will do everything to make him successful.

And how could it be otherwise when such parents are in front of your eyes? This is such a family, such a path to success.

So, friends, nothing is impossible. If you want something, set goals, one after another. Build your own . Go to them without giving up. Use all your capabilities 100%.

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How I went blind

In 2006, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Fortunately, it turned out to be benign, and I was operated on. Everything would be fine, but during treatment I lost my vision.
My twin sister Natalya helped me a lot then. At one point she said, “You're just blind. Life doesn’t end there.” And I took her words as a guide to action.

Yes, I'm blind. So what? I have arms and legs. I can do a lot. Then I asked my sister for knitting needles and yarn and tried knitting. It turned out very badly. Everyone around me said that I was doing nonsense, and a blind man needed to learn everything again. At first I was upset, and then I realized that before I lost my sight, I worked at a school, teaching Russian language and literature to children. If I could teach others, I could teach myself. I continued knitting and began studying the Braille alphabet manual.

How I started creating

I sincerely believe that all emotions, dreams and goals originate from childhood. Then everything that prompts a person to choose a path in life is laid down. As a child, my mother taught me to draw - I remember how she mixed paints, talked about colors... It turned out that I can live without vision, but I am not able to do without drawing. But how can you draw when you can't see? Then I decided to knit a pattern. After all, if a blind person cannot see a flat image, it is necessary to make it three-dimensional.

Little by little I got used to blind knitting. The main problem remained that she could not independently determine the color of the yarn. Then it dawned on me: Braille came up with 63 combinations of six dots to represent letters, numbers, and signs. I also need to come up with my own alphabet of colors so that I can knit and not bother anyone with questions. Then, with the help of my nephew, I marked all the balls of thread with knots and loops according to associations: blue yarn ─ this is a blueberry ─ a knot. Red ─ looks like a tomato ─ loop. Black ─ four little black little devils ─ four loops.

Now I have a lot of knitted paintings. Several exhibitions were organized, including in the Library for the Blind and Visually Impaired. There are paintings with fairy-tale characters, city views, self-portraits where I depict myself wearing dark glasses. I remember the colors of the world well and believe that I convey them correctly. If I draw the sea, then I weave green yarn into the blue color: swamp, light green, emerald.

How I was mentally destroyed

“They teach you how to live there,” is how they described to me the rehabilitation center for the visually impaired on 3 Dzhambula Street. In fact, they taught reading and writing in Braille, working on a computer with a sound program, and moving around the city independently.

I went to rehab twice. After the first year, I went to a sanatorium for the visually impaired in Gelendzhik. There, each blind person is assigned an accompanying person, a kind of escort. This woman did not allow anyone to take a step without her and kept everything under vigilant control - she strangled all independence in the bud.

When I returned home, I realized that I had been mentally destroyed. Everything that had been achieved with such difficulty disappeared, and the panic of the city returned. I had to undergo repeated rehabilitation. During orienteering classes, I asked the teacher if there were any cases where a blind person was robbed or offended. She said that in 40 years of her work she had never encountered anything like this.

I shared my fears with a psychologist. She advised me to bind my fear and bring it. At home I chose black yarn and spun and spun something terrible, reminiscent of a burnt pancake. I thought I would work on my problem. And the next day I’m looking for this pancake and can’t find it – that means I dropped it. The psychologist asks me: “Well, Tatyana Petrovna, did you bring your fear?” I answer: “No, I lost it somewhere.”

I realized that there was nothing to be afraid of. People in St. Petersburg are special: cultured, responsive. Blind people have the best life here - as soon as you leave the house, they immediately offer you help.

How the senses change

Some people think that blind people hear better - this is not true. Blind people simply hear more. For example, I hear a person’s mood, his state, his reactions. Everyone, regardless of their desires, evaluates what is happening. My task is to hear how he sounds, with what intonation he speaks.

They also say that the blind have a well-developed ear for music, and the loss of vision activates other senses. This is partly true, but only an ear for music is talent. And it has nothing to do with blindness. How many famous blind singers do we have in Russia? One Diana Gurtskaya and nothing more.

Previous experience helps you change your mind. In this regard, it is much easier for blind people than for those born blind. We have seen a lot and know firsthand. The hardest thing is to survive this loss.
For people who are blind from birth, there are special programs through which they are introduced to the world around them. In our special library, for example, blind people are introduced by touch to the painting “A Stolen Kiss” by Fragonard. An entire album is dedicated to her, where each fragment is presented in close-up. Fans, dresses, scarves - everything can be touched: “examined.”

How to live without seeing anything

To be honest, you can get used to everything. I work on a computer with a sound program, read Braille (not fluently, but still). For the 85th anniversary of the Society of the Blind, we were given a device for converting flat-printed text into Braille format. Now you just need to load the sheets of text into the typewriter and get three-dimensional letters at the output. In general, the process is simple.

Even the city is not so poorly adapted for the blind: there are sound traffic lights, friendly people. Although, of course, you shouldn’t expect that everyone is trying to help you.
To be honest, what the blind lack is not slats along the houses and signs in Braille. Blind people need employment. This is a great way to provide financial and moral support. But there are far fewer jobs than there are for blind people, unfortunately.

The All-Russian Society of the Blind told me that before the revolution the situation was terrible: either a person stood on the porch or hung on the neck of relatives. The first blind person received higher education in 1950, and a massage department for the blind, that is, a real job opportunity, opened only 25 years ago.

Most people are psychologically damaged by blindness. We just don’t know about it, because they live like moles: they don’t go out into the light, they sit at home, they’re afraid, they’re embarrassed. They don’t understand how a blind person can decide to go out into the city, move freely, and take the subway. I want to tell them all: “Take a cane and overcome difficulties!”

How I found a job

I work as a waiter-guide at the restaurant “Dans le noir?”, where all visitors try dishes in complete darkness. Guests have a choice of four menu options: fish, vegetarian, meat and surprise menu. Without lighting, people rely only on smell and taste to taste food and drink, and also become more aware of their feelings when communicating with each other.

It happens that a person comes to a restaurant who does not know why he is here. My task is to show him that being in the dark is tantamount to being submerged under water. This is a completely different world, but it’s also very interesting. One must enjoy what is happening while there is such an opportunity, and then everything will end: the person will come out into the world and find himself in a familiar environment.

Most often in “Dans le noir?” lovers come on a date. At the end of dinner, I invite them to describe each other. And so the young man says that his girlfriend is the most beautiful, and she, in turn, says that he is dear and the only one. Then I ask them to remember this moment, because here and now they did not see each other with their eyes, but they saw each other with their hearts.

A month ago, at a busy Moscow intersection without a sound signal from the traffic light, I helped a blind girl cross the road. We got to talking, and she said that she had been going to work for a week, this was her first job in 25 years, and she was grateful to fate that now she did not have to hang on her parents’ necks. The girl was trained as a massage therapist, received a certificate, and was hired at some massage parlor. After three years of looking for a job. I decided to find out what the situation is like with the employment of blind people.

It must be said right away, although this is obvious: in terms of employment, there is a huge difference between a blind and a visually impaired person (both are visually impaired).

“It’s much easier for a visually impaired person to find a job than for a completely blind person,” I’m sure Oleg Nikolaevich Smolin, State Duma deputy, blind from birth. Even if a person has only 10% vision left, he can be employed in the same job as a sighted person, it will just take him longer to perform functions related to vision. “The visually impaired can at least spy on something,” says Pavel Malyshev, blind from Nizhny Novgorod. – They can see colors or some information, they can walk without a cane, I, for example, have no idea what color and light are, I even only have “auditory” dreams. A visually impaired person can safely work where a blind person will not be hired at all. And if a visually impaired person has a special education, then there should be no problems with employment at all.”

Visually impaired people can get almost any job: from a teacher and psychologist to a massage therapist and translator. Therefore, we will talk about “totals” - completely blind people who, looking ahead, have a very difficult time.

The job search stage is already a whole job. You can't look for vacancies in the newspaper. There are two ways - a computer (all information on the screen is read out using special programs) and employment services. Let's start with the latter. I compiled a list of all district employment centers in Moscow and started calling with one single question: “Do you have vacancies for blind people?” They answered me: “no.” I asked if there were any vacancies for blind people with higher education, and they answered: “no.” For blind people with higher education and perfect command of computer technology: “no.” For blind people with higher education, computer technology and extensive work experience: “no”.

Not a single Moscow employment service answered me: “come, we’ll look” or “you need to check with the employer”; they didn’t ask what the person had already worked for or what education they had, although I was persistent. But there were all the variations of “no”: “well, no”, “probably not”, “no, of course”, etc.

Then I switched to the Moscow region and called the Balashikha employment service. They directly said that they are not and never have been looking for work for the blind, a blind person can find a job only through the All-Russian Society of the Blind, a blind person can only be employed in certain types of work that are not contraindicated for him. For everyone else, “it’s simply impossible,” the operator told me.

I tried to explain that modern technologies have long moved forward; today a blind person can perfectly control a computer and any electronic device in general. “Can you imagine this yourself?!” – the operator exclaimed and said goodbye.

One of the phones advised me to contact the government service for promoting the employment of people with disabilities and gave me a phone number and address. For a week no one answered the phone, and I didn’t go to the address, just as no blind person would go.

“The main job search tool is a computer and a phone,” he told me Nikolay Stepkov, - a 25-year-old blind person from the Moscow region. – You look for a vacancy on the Internet, and then either call the specified phone number or write an email. If there is no mail, and no one answers the phone, of course, I won’t go anywhere. No, I know how to move around the city and quite quickly, but everyone understands that every time it’s not so much stress, but inconvenience.”

Three years ago, Nikolay gave up on employment services (“They don’t know how to work at all, I don’t know a real person who would be helped”) and took computer courses for the blind. Now works as a programmer.

I was looking for regular vacancies, not “for the blind.” He wrote by email, called on the phone, and explained that even though he was blind, he could work well. “There were refusals, usually everyone refused at once,” says Stepkov. “But in the end I found an employer who agreed to watch me work and hired me the next day.” Naturally, I came to this job with my “software”, mainly related to voice acting. I sit with headphones on, work, and don’t bother anyone.” And the girl from the Balashikha employment service still cannot imagine how this is possible.

“You see, all these state labor services, they are not only incompetent, they convey this incompetence to the population, they have a distorted idea of ​​the state, they simply discredit the state,” says Konstantin Aleksandrovich Lapshin, head of the sector for the study of social and labor relations and determination of employment opportunities for blind people under the VOS management apparatus.

“For several decades now, blind people have been not only assembling sockets in specialized factories, but also working in the open labor market: as lawyers, programmers, school teachers, and help desk specialists. We have blind State Duma deputies in Russia, I personally know three blind history teachers, there are dozens of them across Russia.”

Lapshin, being a candidate of economic sciences with a full-time job at VOS, independently searches on the Internet for vacancies for blind and visually impaired people and posts them daily on a special VOS page. “Of course, we have VOS enterprises, these are specialized enterprises where blind people can work,” says Lapshin. – But over the past 20 years, the number of such enterprises has decreased 10 times and salaries there... Well, in Moscow it is 12,000 rubles. This is a huge topic, but in a nutshell, even these enterprises have become unprofitable in hiring visually impaired people, because the state has canceled all tax benefits for them.” Therefore, Lapshin searches the Internet every day for advertisements, contacts employers and asks whether they are ready to hire a visually impaired person for the specified vacancy.”

“No employers call us or offer us anything, understand, no one needs us, we are looking for ourselves,” explains Lapshin. “We are mainly looking for vacancies related to IT, teaching, massage. Often companies are ready to hire blind musicians, singers, and translators.” Therefore, Lapshin is sure, in order for a blind person to find an interesting job, he needs to have an education. The easiest and most trouble-free way is free computer courses at the VOS; any visually impaired person can enroll in them, being a member of the VOS.

But, unfortunately, even with excellent computer skills, it is almost impossible to find these vacancies on the Internet. Just enter “vacancies for the blind” in any search or try to find such a vacancy on any employment site. I’m sure that all you managed to find was a list of vacancies from BOS. That’s why Lapshin likes to say: “Employment of the blind is the work of the blind themselves.”

According to the VOS, the employment situation for blind people has deteriorated significantly over the past year or two. “The range of qualifications for employing the blind is constantly decreasing, partly due to the introduction of modern technologies, partly due to the abolition of benefits for enterprises,” says deputy Smolin, “Besides, no one simply wants to bother with the blind, why, if you can hire sighted In the USSR, the totally blind always had special government support, for example, they did not pay taxes at all. I don’t know what will happen next.”

Meanwhile, the younger generation of blind people is actively mastering computers and receiving higher education in a variety of fields. In the process of preparing this article, I corresponded with dozens of blind young people who often type faster than me, write without errors, and every single one of them works or studies.

“I’m a freelancer, I take on programming projects,” says Vadim Lukyanchuk from Ruza, - I say right away that I am blind, because some projects related to video processing or games are beyond my capabilities. There is always work." Vadim's main activity is his own project to adapt programs for the needs of blind musicians. Pavel Malyshev from Nizhny Novgorod teaches computer literacy to other blind people. Dmitry Vasin from Orenburg, who went blind as a child, works as a massage therapist, and on weekends he sings in a restaurant to his own accompaniment on the guitar. Vyacheslav Tsaregorodtsev from Orlov - a lawyer in technical support, works part-time as a massage therapist. Olga Maslova from Vladivostok - violinist. Elena Velikanova from St. Petersburg - English tutor and courier. Dozens of totally blind people are looking for work and finding it.

“Of course, it’s much more difficult for us,” says Elena Velikanova, who lost her sight in early childhood. I can say for sure that the state is not helping us. VOS and some ordinary people help a lot with their participation. We have our own community on the Internet, there is a lot of support there, they won’t let us give up. But it is impossible to sit and wait until they find a job for you, not to engage in your education, not to develop professionally, neither sighted nor blind. I can say for sure that a focused person, no matter what his vision, will find a job.”

By its nature, film is a visual medium.

One might assume that an art form designed primarily for the eyes would not be of interest to a blind person, but not in this case.

Not only does Tommy Edison love watching movies, he also reviews them on YouTube. Even though he was born blind, Edison always enjoyed watching movies.

Since he started writing reviews, his videos have attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Edison watches a lot of different films, from "The Hunger Games" to "Reservoir Dogs", but his approach to cinema is completely different from how ordinary moviegoers see it.

"I'm not distracted by beautiful special effects and attractive people. I watch a movie to see the action," he once said. Because he judges films only by what he hears, Edison is not attracted to blockbusters. Although he is a fan of Die Hard.

Even more exciting than his reviews is his second YouTube channel, where he answers interesting questions from his readers. For example, how does a blind person learn to smile, can blind people understand descriptions of flowers, and would Edison want to see if given the opportunity.

Edison's simple but profound personal thoughts provide amazing insight into the world of blind people.

Craig Lundberg was a 24-year-old corporal serving in Bars, Iraq, when his life changed forever. In 2007, a young soldier was seriously injured, resulting in damage to his head, face and hands. Moreover, this accident left him completely blind.

Doctors were forced to remove his left eye, leaving his right eyeball, which also completely lost its function. Suddenly Craig found himself in complete darkness.

Lundberg was being trained to live with a guide dog when he was chosen by the Department of Defense to test out its fantastic new technology called BrainPort.

After putting on a pair of dark glasses equipped with a video camera, images from the camera were converted into electrical impulses and sent to a special device located on Lundberg's tongue.

Scientists are not entirely sure what exactly was at work in this case: the signals passed through the tongue, or through the visual cortex, or through the somatosensory cortex (the part of the brain that processes touch). In any case, Lundberg can now see, in a certain sense of the word.

While the device on the tongue feels like licking a battery, Lundberg can “see” two-dimensional images. He was able to identify simple shapes without making unnecessary movements.

Even more amazing is the fact that he can see letters, which gives him the ability to read. While the device is still being further developed, it promises to give Lundberg new life. At the same time, the soldier himself says that he will never get rid of his faithful guide dog.

Former Royal Navy sailor Alan Lock always dreamed of becoming a submarine officer, but during his training he lost his sight in just six weeks due to a rapid onset.

Locke looks at the world through "frosted glass with white spots." However, he did not allow such a small thing as blindness to drag his life downhill. Inspired by his disability, Locke decided to conquer the world.

Between 2003 and 2012, he competed in 18 marathons, climbed Mount Elbrus and became the first blind person to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. However, unsatisfied with this list of achievements, Lock decided to try something else.

In 2009, 29-year-old Milena Channing suffered a stroke that destroyed her primary visual cortex. It should have made her completely blind, but Channing swore she could see the rain dripping onto the ground.

She saw a car whizzing past her house, she even sees her daughter running and playing. When doctors analyzed the woman's brain, they thought Milena was mistaken.

It is neurologically impossible for her to see anything more than a big void. They believed that young Channing might have developed Charles Bonnet syndrome, in which blind people suffer from hallucinations.

Convinced that these outbreaks were real, Channing met with Gordon Dutton, the only doctor who believed her. A Glasgow ophthalmologist suspected that Channing was actually experiencing Riddoch's phenomenon, a strange syndrome that causes people to see only moving figures and nothing else.

To test his theory, the doctor sat in a rocking chair and moved back and forth while talking to Channing. Suddenly she saw his silhouette.

Five years after her stroke, a team of researchers confirmed that the part of Milena's brain that processes movement was intact. Instead of sending signals to the visual cortex, her eyes sent information to the part of the brain that interprets movement.

Fortunately, with the help of Dr. Dutton, the woman gradually learned to see things more clearly. She still can't make out people's faces because the part of her brain responsible for it is beyond repair, but the fact that she can see anything at all is a miracle.

Esref Armagan was born in 1953 in Istanbul. However, he suffered serious injuries during childbirth. Not only was the family very poor, but his eyes couldn’t even be called eyes. One was the size of a small pea, and the second did not work at all.

Despite this, Armagan was a very curious baby. Wanting to explore the world, he began to touch everything he could get his hands on and eventually began to draw. Starting at the age of six, he went from butterflies and colored pencils to portraits and oil paints.

Working in complete silence, Armagan visualizes the image and then sketches it using a Braille stylus. He then checks the pencil sketch by examining it with his sensitive left hand.

After that, he uses his fingers and paint to paint a windmill, a villa and even a Volvo.

In 2009, the Swedish car company hired Armagan to paint their new S60. Using his fingers to trace the contours of the car, he quickly drew an impressive picture. Considering a person's lack of vision from birth, this is fascinating.

Armagan's paintings have been exhibited in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, the USA and China. He even appeared in an episode of the Discovery Channel's "Real Super People."

However, the strangest thing is that Armagan has a very unusual brain. Harvard scientists asked the Turk to make several sketches, while they recorded information using an MRI scanner.

The scientists were shocked by what they saw. Typically, the visual cortex of a blind person appears as a black spot when scanned. This is exactly what Armagan's cortex looked like when he wasn't drawing, but as soon as he picked up a pencil and started creating, his visual cortex lit up like a Christmas tree.

It looked like he was an ordinary sighted person. Scientists are still trying to unravel the man’s mysterious brain, but for now he transfers everything that happens in his head to paper.

Joe Engressia was a very unusual guy. He was born blind in 1949 and loved playing with telephones, dialing random numbers and listening to voices. It was the only way a boy could entertain himself in the 1950s.

He was also one of those kids who really enjoyed whistling. The combination of these strange hobbies led Joe to penetrate the secret world of the telephone system.

Joe was eight years old when he made the call and started whistling, but then the recording suddenly stopped. He tried again and realized that whenever the whistle reached 2600 Hz, the message was interrupted.

Thanks to his singing abilities, he was able to fool the system into "believing" that Joe was the operator. His possibilities were essentially limitless. He could make free long-distance calls or communicate with several people simultaneously on a conference call.

In the end, he was so well “trained” that he sent the challenge to himself across the whole world, and received it on a separate receiver.

Obviously, his actions were illegal, so Engressia was arrested twice. Later he found himself at the very center of a strange subculture. As it turns out, Joe wasn't the only one hacking into phone lines.

In the 1970s, "phreaking" (the name given to what Joe and his ilk did) was everywhere, and Engressia became one of the leaders of this activity.

Some of the tech-savvy phreaking offspring, like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, went further. Engressia, however, was not so lucky.

Despite the fact that he had an IQ of 172, his unsettled home life, as well as sexual abuse by a teacher as a child, completely unsettled him. In his later life, Engressia changed his last name to Joybubbles and insisted that he was only 5 years old.

Joybubbles collected toys, talked to imaginary friends, and lived under the care of a welfare organization. Sadly, Joe died in 2007, leaving behind an impressive but depressing legacy.

Anyone who drives a car has Ralph Teetor to thank. In the 1940s, he invented one of the most useful features in a car: cruise control. This is impressive considering that Ralph became blind at the age of five.

He lost his sight during an accident, however, this did not stop him from inventing and making things.

In fact, being blind even gave him an advantage that many inventors lack. Not only could he concentrate better on his tasks, he was also not limited by what his eyes told him.

He was free to create what his mind saw, and he created quite a few interesting things in his time. In 1902, a 12-year-old inventor built a car from scrap materials.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1912, he developed a new type of fishing rod and reel, a locking mechanism, and also discovered a method for balancing steam turbine rotors in destroyer torpedo boats.

Eventually, he opened his own corporation, which specialized in piston rings. However, his greatest achievement came during World War II when he was driving a car driven by his lawyer.

As the story goes, the lawyer could not speak and drive at the same time. Whenever he started talking, the car started moving jerkily. Then he stopped and pressed the gas. This kind of driving quickly made the blind passenger feel sick.

Frustrated with his friend's inability to drive, Titor came up with the concept of cruise control. Ten years later, he decided to patent his invention, and soon after this feature appeared in Chrysler cars.

Today, almost every car on the road is equipped with this feature, all thanks to a blind inventor and a bad driver.

Have you ever heard of Laura Bridgman? There was a time when she was the most famous person on the planet. Born in 1829, Bridgman lost four of her five senses at the age of two after suffering from scarlet fever.

Left with only the sense of touch, the young girl graduated from the Peterson Institute in Boston, whose manager was Samuel Gridley Howe. At his core, he was an unpleasant person, but Laura’s case struck him very much, so when the baby turned seven years old, he decided to teach Laura how to communicate with the outside world.

Bridgman learned to form letters using her fingers, making contact with the palm of her “interlocutor,” slowly creating words and sentences. She also learned to read by feeling the raised letters with her fingers.

Thanks to the hard work she put in, as well as Howe's constant reports, Bridgman became a celebrity. Thousands of fans came to her, asking for an autograph and a lock of hair.

People came from all over the world to watch her read and write, and little girls chipped the glass eyes off their dolls and called them "Laura." She even met Charles Dickenson, who wrote about her in one of his books, which made her even more famous.

Of course, life as a teenager was hard. As she grew older, she began to suffer from anorexia because she could not taste or smell food. She also became the center of a strange experiment.

It is curious what would happen if a person were completely cut off from religious influence. Howe forbade talking to Laura about spiritual matters. When a group of evangelists converted her to Christianity, Howe was furious and abandoned his student.

He even went so far as to claim that blind people were mentally inferior to the rest of the world. Abandoned by her teacher, Bridgman spent the rest of her life at the Perkins Institute, forgotten and abandoned by the world.

Jacob Bolotin occupies a special place in medical history. The son of poor Polish immigrants and a good doctor, he was born in 1888 in Chicago. Unfortunately, congenital blindness was an obsession for the family: three of the seven Bolotin children, including Jacob, were born blind.

Due to his lack of vision, Jacob quickly developed his other senses. Soon he recognized a person by his smell. After graduating from a school for the blind, Bolotin began working as a salesman, selling brushes and typewriters on the streets of Chicago.

His big dream was to become a doctor, but most colleges refused to admit a blind student. However, the guy was very persistent and tirelessly knocked on college doors. He eventually studied at the Chicago Medical College, and at age 24, became the first licensed physician to be congenitally blind.

Bolotin specialized in heart and lungs. Since he could not see his patients, he relied on his fingers and ears to make diagnoses. During an internship at Francis Willard Hospital, he diagnosed a young woman with heart valve complications simply by smelling her skin and listening to her pulse.

In addition to his medical work, he traveled throughout the Midwest lecturing on blindness and organized the first group of blind Boy Scouts. Unfortunately, Bolotin died at the age of 36; about 5,000 people came to his funeral, whose lives in one way or another intersected with the life and work of this man.

Otto Weidt hated the Nazis. He knew that Hitler was a tyrant. When Hitler's anti-Semitic policies "went" through the streets of Berlin, Otto realized that he had to act. Along with the more famous Oskar Schindler, Veidt ran a store staffed primarily by Jews.

The only difference was that Otto's workers were disabled. He constantly hired deaf, dumb and blind people living in the Jewish Home for the Blind and paid them to make brushes and brooms from horsehair.

Veidt knew what it was like to go through life without vision and wanted to help others who suffered from the same problem.

Veidt now had to protect his workers from the Gestapo. At first he tried to convince officials that his people were very important for maintaining the military logistics. When that didn't work, he resorted to bribery, giving away rare items such as champagne, cigars and perfume.

Things got even more complicated when the Nazis decided to expel the Jewish population from Berlin. Veidt fought desperately for his people, doing everything possible and impossible for them.

For example, he saved one of his workers, Alice Licht, who was arrested and thrown into a cattle truck bound for Auschwitz. Despite his blindness, Veidt went to Poland and rented a house there for a young woman.

Veidt and Licht fell in love, but their story was tragic. She left for America after the Reich fell and never saw her blind benefactor again. There was no consolation for a broken heart.

Veidt was posthumously recognized by Yad Veshem as a "Righteous Among the Nations" as a non-Jew who risked everything to save his fellow men.

Narrated by NILISHA MOHAPATRA - translation and adaptation "Aziris" - website

​One cloudy evening, when the electricity in my house went out as a result of a thunderstorm, and my eyes had not yet had time to adapt to the darkness, I realized for the first time what it was like to exist with partial loss of vision. Navigating by sounds and tactile sensations, I gained a unique experience. Then I became interested in learning a little more about blind people and how they perceive the world around them.

​This post is a summary of what I have learned. I have collected 13 facts that you probably did not know about blind people. And these 13 things will help you overcome the awkwardness of communicating with people who have visual impairments.

1. They may have a different, non-visual, form of perception of the world.

​Visual impairment does not always mean complete loss. In fact, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), only 15.88% of people who have vision problems are completely blind. The remaining 84.12% have partial or residual vision and can perceive color, light, movement or even the shape of surrounding objects. They may be able to see objects that are blurry or distorted, or have blind spots on them. So, as you now see, many have reduced vision, but this does not mean that they are completely blind.

​2. They are not ashamed of their existing visual impairments.

​Many blind people perceive their blindness as a simple physical problem. And in no case do they perceive it as an obstacle to their personal happiness. They don't believe that "blindness" is a death sentence. This group of people is capable of happiness like no other. And the responsibility for perceiving them as such lies with us. So, the next time you find yourself thinking, “Oh, poor thing, he’s blind,” examine how committed you personally are to changing society’s perceptions of people with physical disabilities.

​3. They don't always need overprotection.

​Blind people are much better oriented in space and have a much better understanding of surrounding objects than it seems at first glance. They may only need help to get acquainted with a new area or master new devices. But visually impaired people are in no way dependent on others. I encourage you to approach all visually impaired people with this in mind - if they need help, trust that they will ask for it on their own.

​4. They are offended by both hyperattention and judgment.

​Many visually impaired people would like to be treated as normal people, rather than as people with physical disabilities. Unwanted and unnecessary help is something that can make them feel inferior. For example, helping them cross the road and accompanying them to their destination if they just asked for directions, buying them groceries and counting money on their behalf, picking up what they dropped, carrying their shopping after them is considered an excess of kindness that many blind people consider humiliating.

Ask if they need help. And leave them alone if you hear “no” as an answer.

​5. They are not hypersensitive and do not have heightened senses.

​Mass culture depicts that if one of a person’s senses stops working, the others become sharper. This is not always true! Although blind people may rely more on other senses and have better memory and auditory responses, they may lack a sixth sense. However, there is evidence that shows that blind people use a process called "echolocation", which uses sound waves to determine the location and size of objects within a certain area. Dr Gavin Buckingham says: “They either snap their fingers or click their tongues to send sound waves towards objects. This skill is often associated with bats, which use echolocation to fly."

​6. They are happy to talk with others in normal language.

​You shouldn't be careful about using visually oriented effects when talking to them. They look, see, observe and even predict your movements! They react normally to such phenomena and may even be offended if you deliberately avoid them in your speech. Instead, simply allow them to be part of your experience as they make you part of theirs. After all, blindness is not a stigma.

​7. They react and participate in the world around them just like any other normal person.

Yes. People with blindness enjoy exploring new places, going to music concerts, trying food at new restaurants, and even doing extreme sports like skydiving. They are as excited about the world around them as any other person. But some of them are quite shy and prefer to spend time in familiar surroundings. Others are more expressive and like to seek out new sensations.

​8. They have dreams.

​Their dreams are connected to everyday life - a rich mixture of sensory signals.

In a Danish study of 50 blind adults, 18% of blind participants (both congenitally blind and acquired) reported at least one nap, compared with 7% of sighted participants. Almost 30% of blind people reported smells they smelled during their sleep. Almost 70% reported tactile sensations and 86% reported auditory sensations. However, the emotions and themes of their dreams are known to be similar to those of sighted people.

​9. They perceive colors in their own unique way

​Some people whose blindness is acquired relate to colors in the same way as people with normal vision. For others who have not seen color with their own eyes, they relate to it through associations and the construction of various concepts, such as fire - yellow or sky - blue. They also associate it with forms of energy: blue is cold, white is frozen, red is hot. Sometimes they may only perceive bright colors, or they may take a long time to explain the difference between blue and black or brown, or white and pink.

However, colors have meaning for all people, and blind people understand them in their own way.

​10. Blind people have more nightmares than sighted people.

​This is the result of a mental impression or interpretation of stressful situations because blind people tend to experience more anxiety in everyday life than others. It is more difficult for them to avoid stressors, and therefore their nightmares are closely tied to reality - falling into a ditch, getting hit by a car, running into a tree or being chased. Dr. Amani Meadi, who has studied this phenomenon very closely, says that such nightmares do not affect the quality of life of blind people, but are a true indicator of the experience they have had.

​11. Not all of them use a cane.

​Because there are varying degrees of visual impairment, some people may use white or red canes, the color of which indicates the degree of blindness. Many people choose to use guide dogs that are trained to help them cross curbs, doors, or crosswalks. They monitor their wearer's right shoulder for collision protection.

​12. Many of them calmly and openly tell curious people about their situation.

​You may not know how to deal with people who are blind, or you may want to understand them better. This is a great opportunity to ask them about their lives. The key here is curiosity, a desire to learn to understand and appreciate the uniqueness of visually impaired people. As I said earlier, many blind people do not consider themselves disabled, and can offer many great ideas if you just ask.

​13. Their well-being depends on how you perceive them.

​Psychologists say that success in life, the quality of education and the number of jobs for visually impaired people is directly proportional to the expectations that others place on them and the degree of positive attitude towards them. The more you believe in their abilities, the more confident they will feel. Self-esteem and self-confidence are partly built through social interactions, and it is important that people are exposed to positive experiences. Be that experience for them!

​If you want a positive interaction, just remember that blindness is not a defect or stigma. It is simply a characteristic, like sight itself, as Helen Keller beautifully said about this situation: “I see, and that is why I am happy. What you call darkness is gold to me. I can see a world created by God, not by man.”

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