idea: make this a masterpost for people to reference when writing characters with visual impairments
link articles and research papers on said conditions, diagrams on how they work, causes of said impairments, treatments for said impairments, aids used for said impairments and/or your own personal testimony on living with whatever impairment you have.
I'll start, i myself have astigmatism, in my case its luckily mild, so i do not need any aids most of the time.
Astigmatism is the result of the lens or cornea of the eye being longer on one side than the other giving it a more egg like shape than a round shape which disrupts your eye's ability to reflect light.
This makes your vision blurry and makes your night vision poorer than it should be.
(diagram of what happens with the light reflecting)
the bottom image is actually a slightly more exaggerated version of how text looks on the projector when im in class.
the blurred vision can also result in squinting, and eye strain from focusing your eyes for too long and headaches (which i have gotten esp as an artist and writer)
the more common treatments include glasses and contact lenses (which i have glasses, i don't need them all the time but i use them when reading or using a computer for long periods of time, driving, or watching TV, or if im in class and need to see the board, however i don't really need them for most other basic tasks, as said, my case is pretty mild from what I've gathered). However laser eyes surgery to correct the shape of the cornea, or lens replacement surgery, there also seems to be what i presume to be a much newer surgery that involves implanting a compatible artificial lens between the natural lens and iris.
another thing is when were out at night, part of what makes it hard to see is how the lights look to us, here's the most common comparison between normal vision and astigmatic vision you'll find on the web along with other examples of what the street lights and car headlights may look like to us
(normal vision: right astigmatism: left)
this is actually close to what i see on night walks as we don't all see streaky lights, what i see is what would be called starbursts
though i wouldn't be shocked to learn some of us see all of these or just more than one (i mean i always see a slight halo around the moon when I'm out)
now my personal experience, again keep in mind i don't speak for everyone with astigmatism, my case is much more mild, i also have the curse of incredibly sensitive eyes and sensitive peripheral vision, making me not want contact lenses but also wearing glasses is difficult for me, i had to get a pair with clear frames just so the frames didn't stand out so strongly out of the corner of my eye and give me a headache, and i still need to wear these mfs almost right up to my eyeballs so that i can hardly see the frames from the corner of my eye.
So in my experience with a more mild form of astigmatism, it actually wasn't caught and properly treated until recently. It was late summer of last year when i got my current pair of glasses, keep in mind im 19 as of posting, turning 20 this November, so i was already 18 by then going on 19.
I was noted as having a visual impairment around 5th grade or so, but either they misdiagnosed me or they gave me the wrong prescription because the glasses they gave me actually made my vision worse. They pretty much made me near-sighted, when i wore them everything looked further away and i realized the problem one day at a Walgreens while wearing them, i tried reading a sign above an aisle but couldn't read it, it was too far away, when i went to take my glasses off i could read it just fine. This actually makes me wonder if they thought i was far sighted (which im not clinically far-sighted, im a bit borderline in my left eye but has never caused a significant issue) As a result i stopped wearing them.
I do kinda wonder if the mildness of my astigmatism made it harder to diagnose but im not sure as my memories from that time period are pretty fuzzy. However I know my main complaint was that when I'd play Undertale (yes im a former Undertale fan), I'd go to walk from one end of Snowdin to the other, and if you played the game, you know thats a long trek across a mostly blank area, and when i walked that specific area it made my vision blurry for a bit.
So when i didn't use my glasses, even sitting in the front of class I struggled to read the board. The text was often too small and too far away and it would look blurred together, i got a lot of headaches in middle and high school because i strained my eyes trying to read the board, which was probably only worsened by my lack of sleep because schools make you get up at unholy hours. I also would struggle to stay on top of mandatory reading, not out of difficulty in the task itself or disinterest (most of the time, i mean some of those books did suck ass admittedly), but because i'd try to read up to the point i was supposed to read to and then the words blurred together and i couldn't focus my eyes on the page, this was worse with e-textbooks.
the thing with screens is they're bright, and a lot of places don't give you options to have non-high contrast set ups, a lot of black on white or white on black. This strains even a healthy persons eyes, but due to the already blurred vision i have it just makes it worse (yes I have Discord on a lower contrast setting because its easier to read and doesn't burn my eyes) so if regular textbooks were a pain, you can imagine e-textbooks were practically the death of me and i have no idea how i did as well as i did with keeping up on my reading for anatomy and physiology in high-school. As you can imagine while i was a decent student, i probably would've gotten much better grades if i had glasses, i mean, if i had my glasses i could've read without my eyes giving up on me or getting a headache, i mean thats not the only thing that fucked me over, im sure like an adderal prescription would've helped too, but being able to see without eyestrain would've been nice too.
The biggest struggle was driving, movement made it harder to see which stressed me out and i couldn't see clearly when i drove for driver's ed, in fact i remember distinctly one time my parents finally had time to take me out to practice and my dad made me drive down a short street and back to the empty lot we were practicing in. I was not ready and i could not see shit, because it was i believe around 7:30pm and the sun was down. i remember straining so hard, partially because the car was built for only 5'10 people in mind ig im only 5'0, and because, i could barely make out fuck all in front of me. I was really nervous to be doing this and my dad was getting all snappy with me, and in hindsight i think everyone was lucky the road was so empty because I don't believe i would've seen any vehicles approaching us clearly enough to react in time and would've been blinded by the headlights anyway. So thats one of the reasons i failed behind the wheel and don't have my driver's license. Nowadays i could probably do better id just need glasses, but the only glasses i had would've made it worse, and again i only got a proper diagnosis with the right prescription when i was 18.
so glasses, I don't need mine all the time as mentioned but i do use them. So the bitches fog up like hell, i can almost never position them in such a way that they wont fog up when i breathe if im wearing a mask, and forget scarves too. Also I have heard the will slide down your face depending on your nose shape as they are really only built for one nose shape. I myself am lucky enough to not have much of a problem with this however. Now remember we only grab them by the handles, grabbing them by the lens will dirty the lenses. Also keep in mind the neatness of the character and the sensitivity of their vision, i am not the only one in my family who uses glasses, in fact everyone in my immediate family uses glasses for some tasks (my brother also has mild astigmatism, and so does my mom and she uses glasses for computer work, beading, and reading, and my dad has glasses on all the time due to near-sightedness) and we do have different habits with our glasses due to our differing personalities. My brother pretty much never uses his as his astigmatism is less severe than mine and he doesn't often engage in tasks that would require them, my mom and i actually clean our glasses before we put them on almost every time, and are really particular about keeping ours as clean as possible, we both have sensitive eyes and tend to be kinda germaphobes. My dad isn't much of a germaphobe by comparison and doesn't have as sensitive eyes, and my mom has actually been known to get on his ass for how little he cleans his glasses (in fact i can't remember the last time he cleaned his glasses). And actually keep in mind the severity of the impairment. Not all of us need glasses for everything, and how often we use the glasses and even, how good we are about using them when we need to will be determined by a combination of severity of impairment and general personality or other struggles we have. While my dad doesn't have astigmatism, he does have an impairment that is corrected by glasses (as mentioned, near-sightedness), his impairment is more severe than mine and he requires glasses to do most everything, which does make it harder to forget i imagine. He has his glasses on pretty much all the time except when asleep though i have seen him nap on the couch with them still on). He also is just less forgetful than me, and my impairment is less severe, and i don't need mine all the time. Most of the time you won't see me wearing glasses because i can see well enough to function without them for most tasks. However I'm also more forgetful and can often underestimate how long certain tasks will take (this is mostly due to adhd), good example is me not realizing how long i would take to type this post on my laptop, if i knew it would be this long, I would've grabbed my glasses but too late now i guess. However if i did not have this poor memory or time blindness I probably would've grabbed them before I started typing. So yeah those are some observations I have, can't really speak on contacts or results of surgical proceedures as i do not have experience with those, but anyone who does is free to add on.
anyone else with a different experience is free to add on, especially if your more severe than me. And also feel free to discuss other visual impairments as well, as said i want this to be like a master post. (I would also request adding alt text to any images, this is a post about visual impairments after all).
