Not to start something during Disability Pride Month but I just saw someone vehemently reject Y'shtola's blindness as a disability because it's not really disabling her in any way (i.e. she can still see), but... she can't? Like, she asked Urianger to describe the night sky to her in that cutscene after you clear the Qitana Ravel because she can no longer see it for herself. I felt like that very clearly cemented how she might be able to see but it was more like seeing the aetheric outline or volume of things or whatever and not actual full normal vision.
I was really surprised to see the level of vehemence that person had about the topic, so now I'm wondering if it's a hotly contested topic in the FFXIV fandom ¯\_(ăƒ„)_/¯
Y'Shtola has this thing my mom* calls Blind Without Correction
which is basically saying
she can get glasses (magic that allows her to read aether ink) but she's still blind
b/c if aether ink wasn't involved, she wouldn't be able to see
i guess the person of the post you're complaining about doesn't know anybody with Coke Bottle Lenses - which are Blind Without Correction a lot of the time.
they were thinking being Blind is only Blind WITH Correction which is somebody who can't see even with tools and such to help them.
Y'Shtola is blind by the way, she's just Blind Without Correction, meaning she can have tools which make it so she can See (which tbh isn't much, let's be real here)
*my mom got a master's degree in teaching vision impaired/blind children. these are the children that will go blind as they get older, or they don't have periphriel vision, or they have those thick coke bottle lenses. she taught them Braile, got them large mega watt lamps so they could read, they got the large print school books. But every single one of those children were Blind Without Correction
example of coke bottle lenses
So.. I'm writing a blind character in FFXIV, who learns to navigate with aether perception with help from Y'shtola. And I have opinions…
Aether perception isn't normal vision. If something is devoid of aether, they can't see it, such as shadows. Shadows have no aether, so can't be used for depth, distance, or volume, but Y'shtola and my boy don't need those cues because they're getting accurate 3D info from the aether.
Can you imagine how difficult that would be to translate when you're used to normal vision?! NOTHING looks the same, it would be sensory hell, completely messed up.. but… Y'shtola can see just fine, I guess, with her 'magical cure'.
She manages, and is independent. Her difficulties are generally only mentioned when something plot-wise changes to make her sight less effective, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't face daily challenges. She has had to relearn how to navigate her world! I have a close friend who is blind and helping me write an 'authentic' blind character (authentic in quotes as we're playing in a fantasy sandpit, rules bend, but still with respect for the challenges visually impaired people face).
In fairness I haven't seen the post rejecting Y'shtola's disability to comment on directly, but I have witnessed how blind people CAN be (varying degrees of) independent by paying extra attention to how they organise themselves (putting different bank notes in different parts of their wallets, committing routes to memory, counting steps between landmarks if they are able to, and so on) - massive, massive efforts just to give themselves a certain level of normality and independence. And appearing to be unaffected does not make it less of a disability.
