My mother worked for the Minnesota State Services for the Blind for 40 years, so I grew up around a lot of blind people.

One of the things that surprises most people is that most “legally blind” people can still see, they just have impaired vision. Anywhere from complete blindness (no sense of light) to cloudy or blurry patches obscuring parts of their vision. So asking what blind people can see is kind of a complicated question, as it depends on their specific condition.

One of my best friends in high school woke up with clouded-over corneas one day. It was a congenital condition, inherited from his biological parents, but a surprise because he was adopted as a baby, so he had no idea what his biological medical conditions were until they happened. (He also has Marfan’s Syndrome and a heart condition, and was basically told by doctors he’d be lucky to live past his teens, which thankfully wasn’t true. He’s almost 40 now and still going. But I digress…)

Fortunately, I had spent enough time around blind people that I was able to help him get from class to class. His biggest annoyance was people shoving their hands in his face and asking, “Can you see this?” And when he flinched at the blurry object flying at his face, they would accuse him of faking his blindness.

Eventually, he got a corneal transplant and was able to regain most of his vision. But his vision is still bad enough that he’s considered legally blind. He had started working as a chef right out of high school (he attended the Culinary Institute of America, so he had professional training), but further complications with his vision down the road meant that he had to quit his dream job. No business would hire him, as his disability made him a liability in the kitchen.