Comment by jesterswilde

My daughter had a few disabled children in the same group during her kindergarden/school years. No more than one or two at the same time. It was always started with a proper explanation of the handicap and the problems and how to handle the situations. And after that there was just natural playing with eachother in the group. Children are wonderful at learning, accepting and adapting. It just takes a good teacher to lead them on the right path from the start.

Without wishing to minimise the very real, very serious consequences of your blindness, your points sound familiar to somebody who suffers from severe anxiety.

People being overly protective makes things more confusing. Technology (including many medications), often don't really deal with the root cause, but some things do help (like talking therapy and some meds). Independence can be challenging, going outside can be challenging, going outside can be a deeply uncomfortable endeavour, and yet getting on with life is important and so we keep moving.

I'm sure blindness sucks in ways I can't easily empathise with as a sighted person, and so it's not anything close to a reasonable metaphor, but I feel I empathise with a sense of discomfort, anxiety and confusion. I never thought it would be the same. Thank you for sharing, and keep moving.

I have a couple of handicapped kids and definitely vouch for #1. When the first one was born, my wife agonized about whether we should spoil that child because of the handicap. My answer was resounding no. We would simply deal with it, and the kid would have to understand that there were certain limitations. This was tough for my wife, but she acceded. It worked out well.

I've also been legally blind since birth, although I have a decent amount of usable vision. I'm not sure I 100% agree with your #2 statement.

Thank you for sharing. I'm in research that is somewhat attached to the technology side and find 2) particularly interesting.

Did you ever look into electrotactile tongue display units? What is your opinion?

I'm curious about what neuralink will present soon. Musk mentioned "atari graphics" recently, so they probably will for now only focus on generating phosphene-based crude bitmaps in the primary visual cortex (which has been demonstrated to work years ago). I can't know what they are up to and believe / expect they are internally more ambitious about stimulating the higher visual system. But if it boils down to the phosphene bitmaps I expect TDUs (which have FDA approval, already seem to work well and don't require invasive surgery...) to become part of the discussion.

Thanks for sharing this perspective, it was very interesting.

Thanks for your comment. That is a helpful perspective.

Ref point 3 about high speed metal, moving to a place where things are in walking distance / less car centric could perhaps be a way to better enable independence?