this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
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you're blind ? using lemmy ? dude please talk more , how ? heck how did you even see the image ?!
Being blind is a spectrum, but even 'fully' blind people can use phones and computers with a screen reader.
Alt-text allows people to describe images, OCR can recognise text in images, and now AI can also describe images.
Blind people aren't helpless, incapable or dependent, like some stereotypes might lead you to believe. Many are able to live relatively normal, independent lives.
Some even play videogames and stream on twitch.
But some find constantly being asked the same questions and needing to inform others that they aren't incapable to be quite annoying. Especially when this sort of info is readily available online.
Blind doesn't mean they can't see anything. Just that they have impaired vision.
My mother used to work for the Minnesota State Services for the Blind, so I grew up around a bunch of blind people. Most of them could partially see. They were considered "legally blind." But they still needed tools to help them "see" better.
That's what my mother's job did; they provided access to equipment to assist blind people in their day-to-day lives. Converting books into braille or audio recordings, supplying walking canes, tape decks, and access to other resources to help them out.
They also gave out radios tuned to their own station, and they had a broadcasting studio in the office where employees or volunteers would just read newspapers or magazines for blind people to listen to over the radio.
Granted, my memory of all this was back before the Internet was a thing. I'm sure there are more advanced tools for this modern day and age that help with computer access.
Why call them blind then? The definition of blind says 1/10 or less of normal vision. There’s no way you can read text on a phone or computer with that.
I always assumed blind people just used TTS and voice reading.
Blindness comes in many different forms. It's not about your vision being blurred or completely dark. Some blind people can only see clearly through tiny slits or pinholes in their vision.
Imagine a sheet of paper that you poke maybe 2 or 3 small holes in, then hold up a few inches from your face. Those holes are all you can see through in your field of vision; the rest is obscured.
And then there are people who need bottle-lensed glasses just to be able to barely read large 100-pt text in front of their face. They're considered blind, even though they have some vision.
My mother had a Polish friend from her work who was like this. He had insanely thick glasses and walked mostly without a cane in familiar areas, but would have to touch your face to gauge your reaction while talking with you. Or practically press his face up against yours to look you in the eye. He had a laptop that would scan documents and display them in massive font so he could read them on the go.
Also, one of my best friends in high school woke up blind one day. His corneas detached from his eyeballs; a genetic defect from his family. He didn't wake up in a dark room, he could still see shapes and colors. But he couldn't focus on any of them.
I was tasked with walking him to each of his classes in school, because I had experience leading the blind. His greatest annoyance was when people waved their hand in front of his face and asked if he could see it. When he flinched (because a large blurry object came at his head), they accused him of faking blindness because he saw them. But he couldn't make out what was coming at him, he was just reacting to sudden movements near his face.
My friend eventually got corneal transplants, which restored most of his vision. But he can never drive a car because his vision isn't good enough to read road signs, even with corrective lenses. He's considered legally blind.
When you need to split hairs, blind folks will call themselves "legally blind" if they have some limited sight, or "totally/completely blind" if they have no vision whatsoever. But if your optometrist claims you qualify for legally blind, you're generally considered blind amongst their community and qualify for any associated disability benefits that come with blindness.
I see, makes sense. Thank you for the explanation.
I worked with a guy doing tech support that was blind. It was fascinating. He couldn't of course see images. He would often ask me what was on the screen so he could help the caller. He used a Braille keyboard. It was awesome. Basically scroll line by line and the keyboard pops up the line enabling him to read it.
That’s super awesome. Your employer was doing a good thing enabling that
Yeah he was a really crazy interesting guy. At one point in time I actually let him drive my car in the parking lot because he said he had never driven a car before and he was always curious about it. Scariest 10 minutes of my life but it was an awesome blast to do that. He actually did pretty good at taking direction except for when we hit a curb because I told him to turn two sharp going around some of the berms.
Screen readers have gotten pretty good. They can use OCR to read text on an image if it's not too jpeg'd and there's even some that can describe the image a bit.
Many communities also have rules that you have to add captions to your images.