essay about blind man

Friday essay: blind people are often exhausted by daily prejudice – but being blind is ‘inherently creative’

Adjunct Research Fellow, Western Sydney University

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Amanda Tink does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Andrew Leland was in his thirties when he had to stop driving at night – and then stop driving at all. Next, he had to start using a cane in public. As the cycle of decreasing vision became familiar, each absent sliver of vision required more adjustment to how he navigated the world.

He moves through the same steps in the same sequence each time, but each loss is unique, and uniquely stressful. And he can still see the disdain of sighted people, which makes him long to lose all his vision at once:

I thought about my periodic desire for the eye disease to just get it over with, and take the rest of my sight. I wanted to be relieved of seeing the way people look at blindness: the scorn, the condescension, the entitled, almost sexual leer. Skepticism, pity, revulsion, curiosity. I know I’ve looked at blind people this way too […] But I was a different person then: I didn’t really think of myself as blind.

Blindness, creativity and memoir

Responding to the idea that James Joyce’s blindness influenced his writing of Finnegans Wake , his biographer Richard Ellmann asserted:

The theory that Joyce wrote his book for the ear because he could not see is not only an insult to the creative imagination, but an error of fact. Joyce could see; to be for periods half-blind is not at all the same thing as to be permanently blind.

What Ellmann presents as a fact is actually a common myth. 85% of permanently blind people have sight . (I am one of the 15% of blind people who is totally blind, and the even smaller minority born this way.) And the line between blind and sighted is not straightforward. The results of a number of tests, and other factors, are taken into account.

Ellmann sounds like he is uncomfortable with thinking of Joyce as blind, and thinking of blind people as creative.

By contrast, during the writing of Finnegans Wake, Joyce himself was relaxed about the losses and gains of his situation. Responding to a letter from a friend on this topic, he wrote: “What the eyes bring is nothing. I have a hundred worlds to create, I am losing only one of them.”

Review: The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight – Andrew Leland (Penguin Press), Life Unseen: A Story of Blindness – Selina Mills (Bloomsbury Academic)

These tensions of identity and creativity between those who are sighted and those who are blind existed long before Joyce, and are still prevalent a century later. They are explored with candour and thoughtfulness in two recent memoirs, by Selina Mills and Leland .

Like Joyce, their versions of blindness mean they have sight that gradually decreases over decades. And they are writers – both are journalists.

While their memoirs are obviously written from personal vantage points, Mills and Leland detail much more than their own stories. Interwoven with their experiences of becoming blind are the experiences of blind writers, performers, teachers, activists, inventors and so on.

Mills, who is from the UK, researched blind women throughout European history. The few famous blind women she mentions are from outside Europe (which demonstrates the need for her research). One of them is American activist and author Helen Keller (1880-1968). Another is Tilly Aston (1873-1947), also known as “Australia’s blind poet.”

As Mills’ own sight decreased, she felt surrounded by sighted people’s stereotypes of blindness. She was compelled to research the real members of her community, for herself and her readers. As she writes:

so much of our knowledge of blind people has relied on how sighted people have interpreted blindness. […] We fear it, we punish with it, we find it powerful and alluring all at the same moment and have done so for centuries. Principally, we rarely hear the voices of blind people themselves. Why not? Who were these blind people who lived and died, who were not just heroes or burdens of the sighted world?

Similarly Leland, who lives in the US, concentrates on the recent and present US blind community in order to encourage both himself and his audience to develop a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be blind:

I met people who said that their blindness meant nothing to them – that it was a mere attribute, like hair color – and others whose blindness utterly defined and upended their lives. […] I sympathized with all of these positions, even as I wondered which attitudes I would adopt for my own life. I tried to understand how blindness was changing my identity as a reader and a writer, as a husband and a father, as a citizen and an otherwise privileged white guy.

Read more: The amateur’s age of unriddling: Finnegans Wake on stage

What blind people have in common

I was drawn to both books by their exploration of historical and philosophical questions. But as I read, Leland and Mills’ experiences of being blind with some sight also became compelling for how universal they are.

I have talked with many people losing sight as they transition to blindness, and am well aware of the shape of the sight-loss journey. Yet these books emphasised to me the significant number of experiences blind people have in common, regardless of how much sight we have, or where we live, or when we were born.

Mills and Leland have both been losing sight for two decades now. But they began at different levels of sight and the cause was different for each of them.

Leland’s sight loss began as night blindness when he was a teenager. His research on the early internet suggested the cause was retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative condition where night blindness is followed by peripheral vision loss, then central vision loss, sometimes ending in total blindness. After his first year of college, he went to an eye clinic where his self-diagnosis was confirmed.

Read more: Happy birthday, Braille: how writing you can touch is still helping blind people to read and learn

Leland’s interest in understanding blindness as an identity develops another dimension when he learns his retinitis pigmentosa is part of his Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. He discovers that throughout history, blind people and Jewish people were often denigrated in similar ways.

Medieval literature and disability studies researcher Edward Wheatley points out, for example, that both groups were branded as greedy, lazy, and dishonest. And both groups were said to be responsible for their marginalisation by Christian society – Jewish people for refusing to convert, and blind people for sinfulness.

Significantly, both blind people and Jewish people were early and constant victims of the Nazis. And the threat multiplied if you belonged to both groups.

Read more: Disabled people were Holocaust victims, too: they were excluded from German society and murdered by Nazi programs

The borderlands between blind and sighted

Mills’ sight began to decrease in her early thirties. However, she was already accustomed to living in the borderlands between blind and sighted: she was born with no sight in one eye.

Growing up, she attended mainstream schools. Her childhood, though, had many experiences in common with other blind children. Teachers incorrectly assumed that she had learning difficulties when she was six and she got a prosthetic eye when she was ten. She was left to drift rather than being supported throughout her schooling and she finished school without having been taught braille or how to use a cane.

Having only spent time with sighted people, she was used to thinking of herself as similar to them, even though she was often exhausted and they were not.

In her twenties, she became a journalist and travelled throughout Europe. She only sometimes carried a cane, just as a precaution. Mills was in her early thirties when bus numbers and step edges became difficult to see. This prompted her to go to an ophthalmologist, who discovered she had an inoperable cataract.

Other people’s prejudice

Mills and Leland have to manage a range of emotions that accompany losing sight, as well as the reactions of their families and friends. But the most difficult aspect of being blind, they discover, is other people’s prejudice.

Echoing the experiences of the blind people whose lives they explore, they are exhausted by the frequency and variety of prejudice they have to manage in their daily lives.

Sometimes it is overt: being denied education or work, being told to not have sex or have children, being refused entry to a venue if not accompanied by a sighted person. Sometimes it is questions disguised as concern – about whether you can cook, or how you are sure you have performed a work task properly, or whether you actually need to learn braille.

It always contains the message that being sighted is superior to being blind, and blind people should feel envious of sighted people and ashamed of who we are.

I suspect it was this prejudice Joyce was reacting to when he said, “What the eyes bring is nothing.” I don’t think he meant he had no use at all for the tiny amount of sight he had. I think he was exasperated by so many people continuing to insist it must be more difficult for him to write as a blind person. Certainly, he felt sight was not a prerequisite for creativity and that blindness had enhanced his writing.

This prejudice even extends to sighted people believing they have the knowledge to distinguish between blind and sighted strangers within seconds of seeing them. And they believe they are entitled to call out anyone they are convinced is faking it.

This happens to Mills at a train ticket barrier when the guard asks her for her ticket, then for her disabled person’s travel card. Like most blind people, she keeps the card in a specific place in her wallet, ready for these occasions. But the guard associates blindness with slowness and incompetence, so takes her organisation as evidence she is faking blindness:

“How did you get that then?” “Get what?” “Your disability travel card? – I mean, you can see all right, can’t you?” Having learnt to be patient with other non-believers, I was calm. “Oh, I know, but I have only got about 20 per cent vision on a good day. The doctors tested me.” Unconvinced, the guard continued: “You think you can get your card, and just get away with it. I saw you walking down the platform, bright and breezy. You are faking it!” He was quite proud of his little diatribe and seemed unkeen to let me through unless I confessed to my high crimes and misdemeanours.

Fortunately she has an irrefutable piece of evidence – her prosthetic eye, which she removes and presents to the guard:

“ The queue gasped. I was shaking with fury. You really think I had my real eye plucked out and went through the pain of having a false eye made, just to get a discount on my f*king train ticket?

Blind people are harassed in this way regardless of our level of sight. As a totally blind person, I have many similar anecdotes. However, these experiences can have a particularly devastating effect on someone adjusting to blindness.

Both Mills and Leland discuss how incidents like this make them reluctant to use a cane. "Sometimes I left the cane behind, just to have a day off from the reactions, but the falling over and bashing into lampposts is not always worth it,” writes Mills. “The more I need to use my cane to find curbs and doorways, the more patronizing and intrusive (and sometimes hostile) strangers become,” echoes Leland.

Read more: Henry Lawson and Judith Wright were deaf – but they’re rarely acknowledged as disabled writers. Why does that matter?

Blind women from history

Connecting with other blind people helps both Leland and Mills not just accept, but value their blindness. The blind people they encounter show them how to minimise the effect of sighted prejudice on their identity, and to understand that being blind is inherently creative.

Mills connects with blind women from history who deserve to be better known. And it is thrilling to learn about them with her, and to know that details of their lives are finally more publicly accessible.

They include Saint Odile of Alsace (an area now occupied by France and Germany), born in 660 AD, who travelled throughout Europe and founded two monasteries. Therese-Adele Husson , born in 1803, was a French writer of children’s books and romantic fiction. And Maria Theresia von Paradis , born in 1759 in Austria, was a talented pianist from a young age.

As an adult, Maria Theresia’s life was divided between being subjected to one horrific so-called cure after another and performing throughout Europe. She was friends with Haydn, as well as Mozart – who composed a piano concerto for her. She was a composer herself, of more than five operas and more than 30 sonatas, and in Vienna she established one of the first schools for blind musicians.

As Mills points out, “unlike Mozart and Haydn and a few other known women composers, who died penniless or unpublished, she had what few musicians had in the age – a successful profession and an income.”

Developing a blind identity

Leland feels connected to a number of 20th-century blind writers, such as James Joyce, and to many current blind writers, as well as advocates, engineers and artists.

Many blind people devoted years of their lives to argue for the rights of all disabled people to have equal access to public spaces, education, employment and more.

Meanwhile, so much technology in everyday use over the last century has been created or enhanced by blind people, from long-play records to internet chat forums. And every step of the way, many blind people generously shared their knowledge to help others who were still developing their skills.

One of the people who shared their knowledge with Leland was American activist and teacher Barbara Loos. Leland met Loos at a blindness convention. She encouraged him to attend the residential training course that later accelerates Leland’s cane skills and confidence.

She then pinpoints the problems with how he’d been taught to read braille. This sets him on the path to reestablishing and reinvigorating his identity as a reader by learning to read braille correctly and obtaining a braille display – a device that connects to a computer and displays the screen one line at a time.

once I’d finished my last course, I brought it [the braille display] out again, and fell in love. Reading on the braille display was a palliative against my anxiety about going blind. The more facility I gained with it, the more I could imagine a rich life for myself as a blind reader.

Reading these books, and the lives and work they explore, I feel extremely proud of my community.

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Home — Essay Samples — Geography & Travel — Cathedral — The Allegory Of Blindness In Cathedral

The Allegory of Blindness in Cathedral

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Published: Jun 29, 2018

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Essays on Blind Man

25 samples on this topic

Crafting gobs of Blind Man papers is an inherent part of present-day studying, be it in high-school, college, or university. If you can do that all by yourself, that's just awesome; yet, other students might not be that lucky, as Blind Man writing can be quite challenging. The catalog of free sample Blind Man papers exhibited below was put together in order to help lagging learners rise up to the challenge.

On the one hand, Blind Man essays we showcase here distinctly demonstrate how a really exceptional academic piece of writing should be developed. On the other hand, upon your demand and for a fair cost, a pro essay helper with the relevant academic background can put together a top-notch paper example on Blind Man from scratch.

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Caver (1) tells a story of the discovery of the self. In it, he talks about a blind man who visits the narrator’s house. The blind man seems so informed about life’s issues, and they end up discussing the issue of the cathedral. Through the narration, the reader realizes that there are some aspects of life that he does not fully understand and is helped by the blind man to do so.

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Example: Close Reading Write-up for “Blind Man”

The following write-up is an example of an analysis of Eva Tihanyi’s poem Blind Man :

Eva Tihanyi’s poem Blind Man explores a connection between the senses and music in the life of a blind man. The poem begins with an eclipse, perhaps the source of the man’s blindness, but also the source of a dramatic recalibration of the senses through which the earth / speaks and his hands listen. This reorientation of attention to the earth, to material experiences, and to close listening, produces the jazz-like qualities of syncopation and rhythm that inform the rest of the poem, and which the man enacts through his cane / tapping.

In the second stanza, the poem returns to the man’s blindness, but this time to reorient the reader to the meaning of light. Beginning with the scientific theories of light as both particle and wave, the descriptions rematerialize light by making it into a more tangible thing. Because the particles and waves are falling and flowing , the light becomes a tangible object or liquid that produces bodily sensations that the blind man can interpret as melodies on his eyelids. Interestingly, this reinterpretation of the light also avoids directly referencing the expected sense of warmth on the skin. The flow between senses and meanings is mimicked by a lack of punctuation to signal the end of different thoughts or stanzas, creating a steady flow through the words of the poem as well.

This jazz-like movement of light is worthy of consideration. The translation of this sensation, perhaps obliquely suggesting the heat of sunlight on skin, produces a white melody scored on dark sheets, a musicality of life that is the inverse of a sighted person’s understanding. The translation of light into a musical score, but in an inverse or negative image of typical sheet music, suggests a process of reception and response that alters substantially as the blind man’s senses recalibrate to material experience, such that the earth / speaks … and his hands listen.

Tihanyi further equates the experience of blindness with the sound of jazz in the final stanza that moves beyond the imagery of light. The blind man’s penchant for roses cannot be based on their colour or other visual properties, but instead connects to their feel and smell. Here again, the response is musical, as he hears them sing. This line suggests that the loss of sight recalibrates the experience of the rose, but that it remains meaningful. Tihanyi’s poem proposes a musicality to blindness that opens up the world and makes it accessible in different ways.

Less directly, the poem also opens up, through the references to jazz, an interest in and attempted explanation of the creativity of blind jazz musicians like Ray Charles, Art Tatum, and Stevie Wonder who are so gifted and influential in their creative use of musical forms. At the same time, it offers a liberating perception of disability, since it foregrounds a new accessibility to the world, the gifts of hearing roses sing and feeling melodies of light on your eyelids, while glossing over the anger that initially informs the blind man’s daily movements with his tapping cane.

Perhaps we can go back and think of the eclipse as gesturing to the closing off of possibilities that disability and even gendering impose on people, as soon as they enter the mainstream. One way that this might be signaled is by seeing this man as different from other men, perhaps desexualized by his disability. This categorization of men who are disabled or belong to minority cultures as effeminate or asexual, reveals the ways in which heteronormativity is regulated in language.

Postcolonial critics and feminists often argue that those categorized as outside the mainstream see more because they have to understand the majority culture as well as their own, whereas those privileged members of the elite can remain ignorant of the struggles of the less privileged (e.g. see Godard). It may be that Tihanyi is more interested in exploring synaesthesia (a neurological term for the blending of senses) than politics, but it is possible to read her chosen imagery as a gesture towards these issues.

After this short close reading, there remain some questions one might reflect on:

• Does this poem suggest, by glossing over the negative emotions of the blind man, that being blinded by an eclipse is a good thing since it allows a new way to sense music or light? Or does it want to suggest, by exploring the musical riches of other senses, that readers engage with multisensory understandings of the world by valuing the complex meanings offered by all senses?
• How does this poem reflect on creative writing and daily experiences? Does the focus on a white melody / scored on black sheets —on texts that are not made up of visible, typographic words to be read (Braille and scores)—cause us to read towards a new mode of hearing through the senses that speak?
• The lines about a white melody / scored on black sheets, combined with the poem’s references to blindness and jazz, also call up the image of the blind, Black jazz musician. Consider this racialized imagery in connection to the comments above on the politics of language, difference, and privilege. What do you make of this imagery? Does it just romanticize racialized experiences or does it add to the discussion of creativity in some way?

Works Cited

• Godard, Barbara. The Politics of Representation: Some Native Canadian Women Writers. Canadian Literature 124–25 (1990): 183–225. Print. ( PDF )
• Tihanyi, Eva. Blind Man. Canadian Literature 99 (1983): 46–47. Print. ( HTML )

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Sample Essay

Literary Analysis of Guy de Maupassant’s ‘The Blind Man’

‘The Blind Man’ is a short story written by Guy de Maupassant. It is a relatively short piece that examines the experience of the blind man and the severe treatment he experienced in the hands of his family and the community. Operating from a third-person point of view, the author enables readers to view the situation as it is happening from afar. By offering this distant view, the piece is able to highlight the different levels of oppression and cruelty exhibited to the old man. Though he continued to be passive and non-responsive to these acts, the acts continued until eventually he succumbed to the winter cold and experienced a bitter death. It is through such depiction that de Maupassant offers a chilling reality surrounding evil and man’s capability in the promotion of oppression.

One of the important themes emphasized by de Maupassant in this piece reflects man’s cruelty to people who are considered to be physically inferior. As the author tries to convey the story to readers, the detached perspective demonstrates how the people, including the man’s family treated the blind man. By using certain dialogues from some relevant characters such as his brother-in-law, de Maupassant is able to showcase the severity of abuse committed to the man. Longhurst and Grant provide that “de Maupassant succeeds in rousing our disgust, maybe self-disgust, at the image of this silent, passive, yet imperturbable blind man victimized and in the end “eaten” by the cruel “natural ferocity and savage merriment” of his family and community” (1623). The thing that is more saddening of course is the willingness of the blind man to accept his fate without complaining or saying a word.

Another reality highlighted by de Maupassant in this story is the reality of oppression and the way it manifests within individuals and society. From the piece, the blind man symbolizes people who are disenfranchised, subjugated and treated inhumanely by both individuals and social institutions. The severity of actions committed by the anonymous characters in the story seeks to reflect the disparities of human condition and how they are manifested within society. As Richard Fusco provides, “Maupassant thus forces readers to contend with the unresolvable disparity between life as it ought to be and life as it is, leading them to admit the inevitable duality of most perceptions” (48). Applying this quote in this case, the story exhibits the severity of human oppression and how this severity can induce a collective response to doing evil.

Lastly, the passiveness of the blind man also shows the numbness that oppression can create to individuals and groups. It remains to be a saddening feature wherein people, like the blind man are forced to accept the inhumane actions committed against them. For the case of protagonist in the story, the multitude of abuses could have triggered his capacity to fight back but instead chose to accept his fate or be silent about the actions committed against him (de Maupassant 1). One way of looking at this is numbness as the blind man realizes his lack of capability to fight back because of his physical condition. The sad part of this of course is the blind man’s acceptance of his fate, a decision he would soon suffer as he succumbed to the harshness and human suffering.

Overall, Guy de Maupassant’s ‘The Blind Man’ is a story depicting the reality of human oppression within society. It emphasizes the nature of abuse the blind man was subjected to and how he finally succumbed to this evil that has brought him suffering and demise. Written from an observer’s standpoint, the author is able to highlight important themes related to oppression, cruelty and how all these forced the numbness of society towards its use. By emphasizing on this extreme reality, de Maupassant is able to advance the reality of evil within society and if not properly managed can induce a lasting impression to individuals or groups who continue and remain to be oppressed.

Works Cited

de Maupassant, Guy. ‘The Blind Man’ About.com.n.d. Web. Accessed 29 August 2014.

Fusco, Richard. Maupassant and the American Short Story: The Influence of Form at the Turn of  the Century,  Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press. 1994. Print.

Longhurst, Mark and Grant, Hugh. ‘Images of Illness: Blindness’ Canadian Family Physician.  35.1(1989): 1623-1626.

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Blind Man Story for Kids in English

Stories and morals for kids.

Among the fondest memories of childhood are the stories that we hear and read as a kid. Short stories and poems that we enjoy as a kid greatly influence our thinking process and personality.

Children's stories like the one mentioned in the articles are often a great way to teach important lessons to the kids. As these stories are short, engaging and have a fascinating narration of the importance of moral virtues in life.

The blind man story mentioned in the article is one such fascinating and inspiring tale of a man who overcomes his difficulties and sets an extraordinary example for kids. Let us look into the story.

Advertisement and the Blind Man Story

An elderly blind man was sitting on a crowded sidewalk on the street. As he was blind, he could not get any job and relied on the kindness of others to survive.

On that day too he begged for money. It was the peak of the commute hours. He sat with a paper and an open tin cup in his lap.

Blind Man Begging 

"BLIND PLEASE HELP!" he had scribbled on a placard beside an open tin cup.

But nobody was willing to lend him money. A young marketing author was walking down the same route when she noticed a blind man holding a placard and an old tin cup.

She also noted that far too many individuals walked by without even seeing the elderly gentleman. She pitied the blind man and wished to assist him.

After some consideration, the marketing copywriter came up with a plan. She took a permanent marker out from her purse and recreated the placard from back to front. She then went on with her business after putting some money inside the cup.

Soon people started putting more money into the cup. After some time, the elderly gentleman noticed that his tin cup was rapidly filling.

After some time, the elderly gentleman noticed that his tin cup was rapidly filling.

"Can anybody read this sign board for me?" the blind man asked a stranger while he was putting some money in the cup.

Since he was a respectable man, the stranger volunteered to read it. "It says, 'IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY, YOU CAN SEE IT! but I'm not able to!" the stranger read.

The old blind man then understood the importance of words. He continued being kind and wise with his words and soon he had a decent life.

Moral of the Story

The blind man story for kids teaches us the importance of the words we speak. This story illustrates how crucial word choice and language are when we want to truly connect with and affect others. As depicted in the story, the young lady helped the blind man by writing a captivating message that explained the difficulties of the man. And it was because of it people started helping the old man.

In conclusion, the story of the blind man is a great way to teach kids about the importance of how we use our words. The story can be used to encourage kids to be creative in their writing and speaking exercise. Parents and teachers can use stories like this to help kids learn critical life lessons in a fun and engaging manner.

FAQs on Blind Man Story for Kids in English

1. Why was the old man sitting on the pavement?

The old man was sitting on the pavement as he was begging for money. The old man was blind and did not know any other means to earn a living other than begging. No one would give him a job to earn money; thus begging and surviving at the mercy of others is the only thing he could do. 

2. How did the young writer help the man?

The young writer felt bad for the blind man as no one was helping him, so she decided to help the man by writing a captivating message on the cardboard. The writer pointed out the difficulties that the man faced and how he was not able to enjoy the simple beauty of life. This helped people to sympathise with the old man and help him.

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Care of Elderly Blind Man Essay Example

• Pages: 5 (1300 words)
• Published: April 15, 2022

Blindness as a disability can result from disorders of the eye, injuries, and other conditions that limit and spoil the victim’s vision. Under the normal condition, an official blindness disease shows that the person has a vision that can be measured 20/200 or worse, as explained by the Iowa Department for the Blind (BOONE, 2002, pg 3387). Age can cause blindness to but slowly as time passes by. Patrick due to age has slowly lost his sight over the last five years. Due to Patrick’s condition, he tends to isolate himself socially and is facing challenges physically, emotionally, socially, psychologically, and spiritually that are discussable below.

The elderly blind people have physical challenges such as navigation from one point to another point. Due to age, the senior citizens are slow, and if they ar

e blind, it is hard for them to know where to know where they are going (HERSH and JOHNSON, 2008, pg 290). The elderly blind people need close assistance since they cannot move from one place to the other without knocking things on the road or on their way. The elderly blind people assistance to navigate from one place to the other hence not to get lost or even land on wrong places at the wrong time.

Since the elderly blind are people too, they face emotional challenges from time to time since they have feelings like other human beings. The elderly blind people have emotional challenges such as feeling helpless, ignored, and lonely among others (BOONE, 2002, pg 3387). The elderly blind tend to feel ignore and helpless especially where resources are scares and people are competing for them. The blind tends t

feel lonely and neglected when normal people get to enjoy viewing on what is happening on the surrounding yet they cannot see yet others are enjoying.

The elderly blind people experience Social challenges since they cannot participate in many things. The elderly blind people are socially challenged since they cannot participate in some sports, job opportunities among others (HERSH and JOHNSON, 2008, pg 290). The blind people who are of age are limited by other employment opportunities and this affects their finances and more of their self-esteem. Blindness limits the people from other sports that require more of eyesight and energy if the person is of age (WATERMEYER, 2016, pg 334). When other people are participating in such sports and recreation activities, the elderly blind individuals feel sidelined hence they separate themselves socially.

Psychological challenges are other factors to consider when dealing with the elderly blind people in the society. The psychological challenges experienced by the elderly blind people include having low self-esteem, over dependent; they feel like a bother to others among others (BOONE, 2002, pg 3387). The elderly blind people feel psychologically challenged since they are over dependent since most of the times they need an assistant next to them to help them even in the simple things in life. The elderly blind people tend to separate themselves from other people since they feel better when they are alone and not depending on the sighted people to do something simple (WATERMEYER, 2016, pg 334).

Spiritual challenges exist too to the elderly blind people in many and different ways. In spiritual concerts and meetings, the elderly blind tend to be identified, pointed out, and given extra privileges

which other people do not want to them (GMELCH, 2008, pg 137). In most of the spiritual meeting are major points of reference which some of the elderly blind people do not want most of the time and to be put in the spotlight.

The different care needs between Patrick and a sighted resident in particular the difference in dressing and eating needs.

Different people have different needs and want in life to live a comfortable life. The elderly blind people and sighted people have different needs that make them different in their ways. The elderly blind people have two shortcomings already since they cannot see and due to their age they cannot perform certain tasks comfortably without assistance from a second party (ORR, 2012, pg 74). The different care needs between Patrick and a sighted resident are discussable particularly the difference in dressing and eating needs below.

The elderly blind people like Patrick and sighted people have different needs in their dressing since their states do not allow them both to be the same. The elderly blind people prefer dressing as long as they are comfortable (BOONE, 2002, pg 3387). People like Patrick do not care about fashion keenly since they do not keep records of what fashion is the best at particular times. The sighted people are keener on fashion and most of the time the latest fashion and even go to the marketplace to choose for themselves. The elderly blind people do not take fashion seriously but they prefer to put on light goggle to cover their eyes same as the sighted people even if they do not have eye problems to correct.

People with the

same state as Patrick have different takes on their eating needs compared to the sighted residents. The elderly blind people prefer taking in diet that helps to correct their eye problem (GMELCH, 2008, pg 137). The sighted tend to eat type of food that is readily available since not all are keen on the diet that helps in correcting and maintaining good eyesight.

How Health Care Workers Would Support and Assist Patrick to Satisfy His Social Needs

As a health worker dealing with an elderly blind person, one needs to make the patient more comfortable with you. The closeness with the elderly blind people gives them room to share any personal problem that might be affecting them (BOONE, 2002, pg 3387). Health workers should know what are the likes and dislikes of the elderly blind people so that they get easy time handling them and comfortably.

As a health worker, you should formulate social activities that do not need more of the eyesight and energy to do. The health worker should engage the client in activities from the client list of likes that are interactive to help the patient participate and raise the level of self-esteem of the patient (GMELCH, 2008, pg 137). The health care worker should educate the client on the use computers and software designed for use by the blind so that when the client is lonely, they can access information and keep updated on what is happening outsides the client’s location (WOLDEAMANUEL, 2016, pg 200).

Key Learning Achieved During This Assignment

In the assignment, one gets to know the condition in which an official blindness disorder is blind, and its measures are 20/200 or worse, as

explained by the Iowa Department for the Blind. The assignment helps to know, the conditions that elderly blind people undergo that tends to isolate themselves socially and the challenges they face physically, emotionally, socially, psychologically, and spiritually. How different in people who are old and blind and the sighted people to live a comfortable life. How health care workers would support and assist Patrick to satisfy his social needs.

• BOONE, L. E. (2012). Code of federal regulations title 10 energy: revised as of january 1, 2002. S.l., U S Govt Printing Office.
• GMELCH, S. B. (2008). Gender on campus: issues for college women. New Brunswick, NJ u.a., Rutgers Univ. Press.
• HERSH, M. A., & JOHNSON, M. A. (2008). Assistive technology for visually impaired and blind people. Berlin, Springer.
• ORR, A. L. (2012). Vision and aging: crossroads for service delivery. New York, American Foundation for the Blind.
• WATERMEYER, B. (2016). Disability and social change: a South African agenda. Cape Town, South Africa, HSRC Press.
• WOLDEAMANUEL, M. G. (2016). Concepts in urban transportation planning: the quest for mobility, sustainability and quality of life. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1214063.
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