Pinned
Since I keep seeing people and fic mentioning Silco's lack of depth perception, I'm gonna spend a minute on writing this. Obviously, there are many, many different ways blind and visually impaired people experience the world, and my view (haha) is just one of them. However, I do think my disability comes close, at least in part, to what Silco likely experiences, which is why I decided to write this thing.
- How does lack of depth perception work? The magic happens in the brain. It gets two images, one from each eye, and the brain makes them into one (simplified, I'm not a doctor). Lack of depth perception happens either if one image goes missing, e.g. because of blindness, or if the brain doesn't do the thing right.
- People can adapt to it. I've been born with my disability, so it's all I've known, but people who experience trauma that leads to the lack of vision on one eye will still be able to adapt. This means that as long as the things we'd like to grab are on the stronger side of our vision, we will not have any issue in actually grabbing it. I'm not going to miss the glass and spill water everywhere because I live with my vision every day, and since neither I nor the glass are moving, I know roughly where it is and I can pick it up without issue. The problem is when things are either in the area of my weaker eye, or if they start moving.
- Movement. This is where it gets tricky. It makes things like dodging, moving out of the way, jumping over obstacles, catching and throwing things, climbing, and almost all kinds of sports incredibly hard, especially if you play/train together with able-bodied people. It's easier when the movement is slow. I would probably be able to catch a ball if it was thrown at me slowly in a nice, high parabola. Anything with speed, such as all ball sports I know, is nigh impossible.
- The weaker eye. Again, I'm not a doctor, so the way I define terms will not line up with what an oculist might call it, but my main visual input comes from one eye. That's what I use to navigate my life. The other eye is all periphery vision for me. The vision is very weak and the overlapping part (the part of the input of both eyes that overlap (think venn diagram)) of my weak eye mixes with that of my strong eye, but they don't quite align, plus I assume my brain works on eliminating as much the signals my weaker eye sends so as to not impair my vision even more, that if I close said weak eye, it feels like I'm losing periphery vision, not half my vision. Sometimes, I catch myself closing my weaker eye to concentrate better. This happens when the weaker eye's image interferes too much with my stronger eye. In addition, if you have a lazy eye, it's likely that its image moves around a bit (at least it does for me), while the stronger eye is steady, which adds to more confusion.
- How do we apply all of this to Silco? I am going to assume that Silco's vision is somewhat similar to mine, based on the fact that his left eye follows the movements of his right eye, so he has some control over the muscles that move the left eye and a direction of where it needs to go, so it's unlikely that he doesn't have any vision at all in that eye. A) His eye is likely very dry and needs to be moisturised a lot. B) It seems like what is causing his impairment is the damage brought by the toxins. For his vision, we can assume this means that it eats away at e.g. his lens, which would mean that his vision on the left eye is blurry and the eye itself is highly sensitive to light to the point where the outside light of cloudy days can be painful. At the same time, we see that his pupil doesn't dilate, so the iris isn't working properly, which means that in case of head trauma, internal bleeding can't be checked. There could be more damage that affects his vision, but since I have no experience with other impairments, I won't include them here to avoid spreading misinformation. (If anyone has similar visual impairments or disabilities, feel free to add to the list.) C) He probably lacks depth perception. This will play out the way I have illustrated above. D) It will be easier to startle Silco when not announcing the approach from his left due to the weak vision of his eye. E) In addition to the pain from having toxins in his eye, he's likely to get headaches and eye strain.
I think that's all for now. I might add to this if I come across something else, but for now that's what my tired brain can come up with. I think what's most important to me personally is that we are more capable and independent than many people think (which is pretty universal to all people with disabilities), and also that we don't walk around as if the world was made out of egg shells. We're perfectly fine doing most domestic tasks. Some of us need a different system for it than able-bodied people, but that doesn't make us less capable.
