First-person essay by Sally Hobart Alexander
Wow! No softball stuff — she got immediately to the crux. The concise answer was, of course, “Yes.”
My mind immediately went to what’s been hardest of all for me — the death of a cherished guide dog, and I’ve lost five. Dave died earlier this year, but I didn’t want to open the question-and-answer segment on such a sad note for the kids.
Still, I did sneak in quite a few thoughts to the school group, and since, I’ve been thinking about what else I would have liked to say, especially if given an older or wider audience. So, here goes.
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I’d want those 8 and 9 year olds and others to know that the word ‘blind’ doesn’t always mean completely without sight. Someone legally blind, for instance, can see at 20 feet what a person with normal eyesight sees at 200 feet. And even those with worse than legal blindness often still see light, colors or objects only in the peripheral or central field of vision. Tiny bits of sight can be confusing and very difficult, but total blindness is even harder, at least at the beginning.
I’d want them to know that 295 million people in the world have moderate-to-severe visual impairment, and 43 million are blind. This total is roughly equivalent to the entire population of the United States.