Sight Loss Does Not Make Someone an Incomplete Person |
Culturally acquired stereotypes affect how visually impaired people see themselves and are seen by others.
Help that seems ordinary for sighted people often is interpreted as evidence of dependency in blind people.
Giving and receiving care and assistance are central features of being human.
Nadine, a research participant in a study on blindness, said that using a white cane in public often made her the center of attention. She explained: “…it’s difficult because sometimes you don’t want everyone to look at you when you walk into a room. Sometimes you just want to sneak in and go … I just want to blend in” (Konrad, 2021).
The white cane attracts the attention of sighted people because it signifies blindness, which evokes their fear about their own vulnerability and their curiosity about people they may rarely encounter in daily life (Paterson, 2013; Garland-Thomson, 2006).
The irony is that this attention-grabbing symbol of blindness often obscures the individuality of those using it, thereby transforming unique cane users into faceless ciphers of disability. As one blind woman put it: “I'm invisible. …Even in a room full of 100 people, I feel like I'm not seen” (Szilva, 2025, p. 63). The person disappears behind the white cane because, in the eyes of others, their disability is the essence of who they are. In fact, others tend to assume that the blind person’s disability explains their personality, motives, and behaviors (Nario-Redmond, 2020).
In this post, I will explore how the use of culturally acquired assumptions to interpret and evaluate the behaviors of visually impaired adults complicates how they view themselves and how they respond to sight loss.
Stereotypes and Internalized Stigma
The onset of sight loss most often occurs in middle age or after (Brinks et al., 2019; NHS England, 2024). The radical changes brought about by sight loss usually trigger an extended period of depression and anxiety, as people gradually make the journey from sightedness to blindness (Nyman et al., 2012). To forestall fully arriving at that destination, they may try to pass as sighted for as long as possible (Thurston, 2024).
Eventually, most people experiencing sight loss face reality, and some take advantage of services that teach the nonvisual skills needed to function effectively in their daily lives, despite limited availability (Kaldenberg et al., 2023). Learning to navigate the world with a white cane is perhaps the nonvisual skill most closely linked to feelings of shame, inferiority, and loss of identity (Berndtsson, 2025). When Alice began to use a cane, she described herself as almost subhuman:
When you have a disability, you’re not a whole person.…[That’s] what gives you this nagging feeling that somehow you don’t have the same human dignity, you’ve become a little less, a little lower, a little… well, you’re not a whole, complete person. (Berndtsson, 2025).
When you have a disability, you’re not a whole person.…[That’s] what gives you this nagging feeling that somehow you don’t have the same human dignity, you’ve become a little less, a little lower, a little… well, you’re not a whole, complete person. (Berndtsson, 2025).
What might Alice have meant........