奇速英语

盲人眼睛里的世界是什么样的？

What do blind people see? It’s common for a sighted person to wonder or for a blind person to wonder whether the experience is the same for others without sight. There is no single answer to the question because there are different degrees of blindness.

A person who has never had sight doesn’t see. Samuel, who was born blind, tells ThoughtCo that saying that a blind person sees black is incorrect because that person often has no other sensation of sight to compare against. “It’s just nothingness,” he says. For a sighted person, it can be helpful to think of it like this: Close one eye and use the open eye to focus on something. What does the closed eye see? Nothing. Another analogy is to compare a blind person’s sight to what you see with your elbow.

People who have lost their sight have different experiences. Some describe seeing complete darkness, like being in a cave. Some people see sparks or experience vivid visual hallucinations (幻觉) that may take the form of recognizable shapes, random shapes, and colors, or flashes of light.

In addition to total blindness, there is functional blindness. Definitions of functional blindness vary from one country to the next. The World Health Organization defines blindness as presenting visual acuity (敏锐度) worse than 3/60. What functionally blind people see depends on the severity of blindness and the form of impairment.

A person may be able to see large objects and people, but they are out of focus. A legally blind person may see colors or see in focus at a certain distance (e.g., be able to count fingers in front of the face). In other cases, color acuity may be lost or all vision is hazy. The experience is highly variable. Joey, who has 20/400 vision, tells ThoughtCo that he “constantly sees neon speckles that are always moving and changing colors.”