It goes without saying that living with visual impairment isn’t easy. Some of the problems that come up are obvious and vary greatly depending on how severe the sigh loss is – navigating the outside world unaided, cooking, reading, watching television, using computers. There’s a lot of adaptive technology out there (way more than I ever realised before losing my sight), and with the help of friends, family and supportive charities such as Guide Dogs for the Blind or RNIB people with visual impairment are able to be more than their disability. There are however much littler things that as I fully sighted person I’d never thought about, but since becoming visually impaired have become unexpectedly annoying!
In no particular order, I’m going to do a series of posts on my #blindpeopleproblems. I’m in no way trying to undermine the much larger struggles that other people with a disability face all the time, these are just things that get on my nerves from time to time. These annoying things aren’t exclusive to people with visual impairment, I’ve just noticed them more since then. First one up this time is food.
Cooking and eating can each present their own difficulties when you are visually impaired, but I’ve actually found it’s the other things surrounding this that have been more of a problem. Going to the supermarket can be incredibly stressful, especially without anyone with you, because on top of it taking ages to find the things you’re actually looking for, you also have to dodge a slalom of other people, pushchairs, toddlers and trolleys (annoying to anyone, yet more hard work when you can’t see them!) People tend to into a fugue state when they’re in supermarkets, usually wandering through aisles or browsing stuff without really paying attention, and it just makes them so much easier to walk into or trip around. Or bash with a basket. Sorry, people!
The other thing that catches me out is expiry dates and sometimes edibility of food. I know some things go out of date a lot faster than others, but not being able to clearly see what day that something goes out of date has meant that so many times I’ve had to throw food away that I’ve bought and when I’ve gone to cook it, it’s not safe to cook any more because it’s expired. One of the worst ones is bread – I live on my own, I find it near impossible to get through an entire loaf of bread before the expiry date, and I can’t tell a lot of the time if it’s gone mouldy even though I’ve only bought it a couple of days ago! I’ve had to stop buying bread unless I know that I’m staying with people who’ll eat it, or at least who can tell me whether it’s safe for me to eat. I have genuinely had to take pictures of a pack of bread rolls and send it to my boyfriend to check whether or not they were safe, because I wasn’t sure and it was the only way I could think of to find out without risking it!
The last food one is probably as much to do with my own stupidity than my eyesight, but not being able to notice things is definitely a blind person problem. I don’t have a fancy fridge that beeps if the door isn’t shut properly, and on numerous occasions I have shut my fridge door, gone to bed and when I’ve gotten up the next day I’ve discovered that my fridge door hasn’t shut properly and the entire contents of the fridge are warm. Worst.
If you have any recommendations or workarounds you can suggest, or want to share stories of what you do instead, please leave a comment or send me a message, especially if you can save me from doing things in particularly dumb ways!
