Top Questions Blind People and Their Children are Asked

1. Does a blind person need help getting dressed?

When you lose your vision, your fingers become your eyes. You can tell an outfit by its fabric type and style. (Buttons, snaps, zippers)

2. How do you find your mouth when eating? 

Do you look at your mouth when you eat? Of course not. It is something that everyone learns to do naturally. Just watch a toddler as it learns to use its silverware.

3. Don’t you have better hearing because you are blind?

Blind people’s hearing is no better than yours. They have learned to rely on it more. My mom actually has a pretty significant hearing loss and wears hearing aids.

4. How do I talk to a blind person? I’m afraid I’ll say the wrong thing.

Most people are afraid to use phrases like: “I saw this person yesterday,” “Did you watch that show?” Blind people use the same terms. They don’t say I listened to a book about gardening. They say I read a book. I saw my aunt yesterday. The worst thing you can do is be to scared to talk to a blind person and instead leave them by themselves without anyone at a social event.

5. How does your mom clean the house?

How does your mom clean the house? (My smarty pants self would want to retort.) My mom used a rag and soap. The only things she did different was use a brush to scrub the tile floors, because using a mop was difficult. Until she had kids old enough to help to the mopping. 🙂 I honestly think my mom way of cleaning and standard was harder. Because the are you cleaned didn’t just have to “look” clean, it had to pass the touch test. The table may look clean, but there could be something stuck to the table that was clear to the eye. So we learned to scrub and touch to insure everything WAS clean.

6. Your mom must be a supermom to have kids and be blind!

My mom wanted to raise children. She learned to care for us as any mom would: trial and error. She never left things down for us to possibly get into. And she had great hearing when we were little. She could hear the refrigerator open up! She taught us to clean up after ourselves, clean the house, and care for our siblings.

7. How does your mom read her mail?

Back before technology was more reasonably priced, Mom had a reader come over once a month to read the bills and mail to her. Now we uses a scanner hooked up to her laptop to read her bills. We will cover this in a post next year!

8. How does your mom do email? 

She uses her laptop with a screen reader. Or she uses her Braille computer (like a tablet). Some blind people have also learned to do email on their phones. Mom keeps up with her email better than me.