One thing I’ve gotten used to being visually impaired is not having lights on. Sometimes I’ll go around in the dark and do things because I know where things are and I don’t have to see everything to understand it. I’ll also feel around for things instead of looking, but that’s a different thing all together. I’ll sometimes go around the house with no lights on. I mean who needs light when you know where everything is? Of course if people move things around that can be a problem, but hey, that’s part of the fun!
Monthly Archives: August 2016
What is that?
One thing I tend to do is ask what things are especially when it comes to food. Sometimes I worry that my questions become annoying, but it really helps. After all sometimes I misunderstand what things are. One time at college I mistook pasta for French fries. Luckily the staff have gotten very used to me and asking what they have for food (so I don’t even have to ask anymore) so I knew what it was, but it was confusing at first. It helps to ask what things are when you’re confused and I think most people aren’t annoyed by it, but it’s certainly a worry. This also goes into my interest in “exploring” things. More or less feeling the general shape and how the thing feels, also looking at what it looks like. It’s a lot of fun to understand things and know what it is even if I’m not directly involved in it. Like when my mom was making her salad for lunch, and I wanted to know what few things were. It didn’t really affect me, but I was curious and she was happy to tell me. So always be curious about what things are because you might be surprised what something is compared to what you think it is.
Voices
Since I’ve never been good at telling what people look like it’s very hard to tell who people are sometimes. It does make things difficult since if I’m in a big room it’s hard to tell where friends are. There are a bunch of times where people seem to “vanish” just because of my vision. So the way I’m used to recognizing people is by house their voice sounds. This also makes me have a strange sort of game that I have with anime where I try to see if I can identify a voice actor and the characters. Sometimes it’s easier than other times.
That’s a different look on cars
While driving with my mom the other day we were stopped behind a car at some stop-lights. The car was confusing at first because I wasn’t sure if I was seeing it right. Turns out that the reason I was confused was because it was a convertible. I’d never seen one from behind so my mind was trying to figure out why there wasn’t the usual top to the car. Once it went into the other lane and I got to see it from the side I could easily understand it, but from the back it took me a while to understand why it looked so odd.
Then sometimes if the sun in is the right place when we pass cars at a high enough speed my eyes play tricks on me. If I look at them at the right angle and the right sunlight it looks like the wheels aren’t even on the ground at all because of how the shadow is. It’s a very strange feeling thinking for a second that the car isn’t on the road completely.
Wait… where did that colour come from?
I’m not sure if anyone else who has limited vision has this, but sometimes I see colours where there aren’t colours. They aren’t bright, but they’re there. So if I look at something white, grey or some other colours I’ll see a shade of another colour depending on the light. Usually red, yellow, green, blue and purple. It’s interesting. I’m not sure why my eyes do it, I suppose it’s just my eyes associating colour where there really isn’t any accidentally. Of course there is no way to really show it so I can’t really prove it or explain how it really works. It also works with numbers and letters sometimes where certain letters take on a certain colour. Guess it makes plain things more colourful.
Well that was… long
So I e-mailed my teachers during the summer to say hello and to get the reading lists so that I could at least to a certain extent be ahead of the game when it came to reading. I got most of the books, and most of them are a decent length, but one of them is over 800 words. What does that mean? 35 hours of listening to one book! It was a decent book at least, but still! I listen to books fast (in fact people wonder how I could listen that fast and understand, but I do actually) so it wasn’t as long as it could have been, but even if I did listen to it twice as fast as normal that’s still 17-18 hours of listening. I can just imagine how long that would take me to actually read if that was on paper. One time I took a reading test to see how fast I read and it was only about 100 words per minute. I think that does depend on the size of the print, but it’s not the best (which was an interesting thing when I was trying to help my mom study for her dog show test to see if she could judge dogs as we drove over to New York. I had to read the papers out to her, and sometimes I stumbled over my words, but it all worked out so yay! ) Actually that’s a thing about y reading. Because I have to look at each words sometimes it’s hard for me to tell where a sentence starts and ends so really it’s just a lot easier to listen to books. Even so that took a long time. I’m going to have to do it over again, but still, it certainly wasn’t an easy task.
Well that was… a frog?
So this is an interesting thing that happened yesterday due to my vision. I take my dog out for walks and he was outside in the back yard for a while to just have some fun. So before I took him out before putting him away for the night I picked up his poop. Now I wouldn’t be talking about this if I hadn’t accidently picked up things that weren’t actually poop. It was after the sun had set and the lights weren’t too bright so I couldn’t exactly tell what everything was. So I grabbed a couple things that I thought were poop, but turns out they weren’t. I figured out they were frogs (or possibly toads). It surprised me the first time because the first one squirmed a lot. I couldn’t figure out what happened at first before I looked and saw it hopping away after I grabbed him. The other one I didn’t really grab in the same way. Still it was very surprising, woops!
The problem with video games
At one point when trying too figure out what to do with my life (and I still might follow the idea because I was pretty good at the class I took) was computer science and specifically the idea of video game making. Part of this is my love for telling a story in writing or in games. So being able to have another venue for telling stories is always fun, but there is another reason. That reason is the fact that a lot of games are usually geared to being able to see (“I know you want me to press these buttons in succession, but you don’t even let me see them before they’re gone so let’s take a few times to get this right”). So it was a thought of mine to make games that have ways for someone with vision loss to be able to play.
There was one game a few friends of mine told me about once that allowed a screen reader to read it, but sadly I found the game boring because for the most part it was just text on a screen with a small map on the bottom. The map wasn’t even very detailed just showing you what rooms were where with little boxes. For someone who can’t see this isn’t a big deal, but as someone who has some sight it wasn’t as fun.
So of course I had the thought “What if there was a game that was stimulating to people who can see, but also able to be played by people who have vision loss. I didn’t think it would be anything as exciting as a high action game, but there are various different types of games.
I play games myself and the most games I play are games where you follow a formula or games where there isn’t too much action. Games like Pokémon and my Yu-gi-oh game there aren’t much chances of things surprising me and I can take my time to read everything that’s involved in what’s going on (though sometimes I miss some things during Pokémon battles, but I get the general idea of what was going on so I don’t feel like I was losing anything). Other games like Siims 3 I sometimes have to get my magnifier out to read some of the things, but despite that it’s more of a game where I can just create my story and not have to worry as much about what’s going on. I do play some fighting games and they can get a bit out of hand sometimes if I have to press buttons, or pay attention (or one boss in one game that I have to let kill me because I just can’t beat them without running out of power even though I can easily avoid attacks, major rage!) but for the most part I push through those games. Another game that I slightly struggle with is when I play Minecraft because I love building, but sometimes the monsters come out of nowhere and startle me. When playing with my friends I tend to stay in an area where there is very little risk of running into anything (or having things sneak up on me). There was one time where I needed one of my friends to get on to get the monsters that were attacking me to go away before I logged on again because I was having a lot of trouble because I got disorientated and it was freaking me out. It was embarrassing! Still, I enjoy games but sometimes fine them hard to play sometimes.
I know it’s a possibility for games to be interactive, but still be helpful for people to play because I know Minecraft has the ability to write on screen what sounds are going on for people who have trouble hearing. I know hearing and seeing are very different things, but just think of it? If there were audio cues when you did a certain action. There are certainly ways.
Sometimes I enjoy watching videos of people playing games. I use that as “TV” from time to time and I enjoy the commentary of ertain people. A lot of the time when I watch them play a game I think “I love this game!” “I wish I had this game.” “Maybe I should play the game.” Though a lot of the time I realize that I probably wouldn’t actually be good at the games for various reasons so I tend to just watch the game be played.
But if games could be engaging for people who have sight, but also be passible enough that someone with little or no vision I think that would be a lot of fun for everyone involved.
There really is something exciting… somewhere
One thing that’s always been a struggle for me when it comes to my dog is the fact that my dog can see things that I can’t see. Living out in the country side has it’s perks but it also has it’s disadvantages. One bit one is that we have rabbits, Coyotes (which there is a family of them now apparently. Two coyotes and four pups), foxes, deer and even a bear. This wouldn’t be too big of a problem (well okay, maybe the bear is a problem), but that’s not what I’m talking about. The point is that of course my dog sees all the rabbits and naturally wants to chase them. It’s hard to react when I don’t see the rabbit or deer for myself so he startles me by suddenly going wild wanting to go after them. There are some signs I’ve noticed about him like how attentive he gets with his ears pricked up and how he walks differently, but it’s always a shock when I’m just trying to have a nice walk, and he decides that he just has to chase the rabbits and deer.
The stories of non-vocal music
Now a bit of story time. When I was younger my older brother used to play the trumpet. He would play it in the school band. So of course at some points mom and I would go “watch” him play. I say watch, but I was never really able to see anyone on the stage playing. So one time m mom told me to just close my eyes and listen to the music instead of trying to see things. I remember this because it’s something that has stuck with me even now. Closing my eyes and listening to music that has no vocals to them unfold their own stories in my mind.
The reason this is so important to me is that this story telling through music actually spawned the idea for my novel I’m working on. Waiting for the bus after a long day I was just listening to my music. It helped that that day we had a talk in one of my classes about music and how it could be used therapeutically. That combined with my love for playing my flute turned into the idea I had, and every time I listen to music I get different feelings and it’s amazing.
Another thing that came out of this was a poem that I wrote (posted below) based on music. During my poetry class in college two years ago my teacher gave us an assignment. She asked us to take a picture and write a poem based on that picture in any way we wished. Of course given my lack of sight I talk to her about how I could do the project without having t be able to see. We came up with the idea that instead of a picture I would find a piece of music (without vocals) and I would write a poem based on that. I can’t say it’s a great poem, but it’s what came to my mind while listening to the piece. I’ll add a video of the piece as well so you can hear it for yourself.
Waves (A poem on Beethoven’s 7th symphony, movement 2)
By: Phillipa Colman
Rise and fall
violent and calm
Like a wave rises
through the ocean
mild, calm, lapping at the shores
merely tasting the sand and the feet of people.
Playful and gentle
Then, the strike of the large waves.
slamming into the earth, crushing all under it
The white foamy head the only indication
as it blots out the sun for that one second
Collecting power
crashing down
Then it calms,
The mighty ocean rests
letting the waves continue to lap the shore
mere whispers of the wave that has passed
small, barely cresting at all
Wet sand all that shows of their coming
Though all know that again
a wave shall rise up
to consume all in its way
To destroy and to eat at the earth
No matter how long the large waves last
or the small ones chase the shore
they will always move into each other
Through the calm will come the chaos
and after the chaos will come the calm
The calm and peace of the small waves will not last
but the large ones will cease
leaving only the calm once again