The answer, of course, is nothing. Just as blind people do not sense the color black, we do not sense anything at all in place of our lack of sensations for magnetic fields or ultraviolet light.
Achromatopsia is also known as “complete color blindness” and is the only type that fully lives up to the term “color blind”. It is extremely rare, however, those who have achromatopsia only see the world in shades of grey, black and white.
Seeing the different sources of light, called light perception, is another form of blindness, alongside tunnel vision and many more. Though, one point to consider is the fact that individuals who were born blind cannot tell whether they see total black or not because, simply, they can't really tell.
What Blind People Actually See. Blind From Birth: A person who has never had sight doesn't see. Samuel, who was born blind, tells ThoughtCo that saying that a blind person sees black is incorrect because that person often has no other sensation of sight to compare against. "It's just nothingness," he says.
Instead, they dream more often and more intensely in sounds, smells, and touch sensations. We should keep in mind that a person blind since birth has never had the experience of seeing images originating from the external world and therefore has never formed visual memories connected to the external world.
Science Behind Blind People's White Eyes
A cataract is an accumulation of protein on the eye's lens. When this happens, light cannot pass through, which causes partial vision loss. Cataracts are not rare. In fact, it is the leading cause of blindness in the world and doesn't just affect the older generation.
The answer isn't a simple yes or no. Some blind people see full visual scenes while they dream, like sighted people do. Others see some visual images but not robust scenes. Others yet do not have a visual component to their dreams at all, although some researchers debate the degree to which this is true.
What do blind people actually see? The answer might surprise you! Most people associate blindness or visual impairment with total darkness. In truth, some 85 percent of people who are legally blind do have some remaining vision and perceive light.
The researchers found that when early blind people get odors as memory cues, they get, just like sighted, the highest proportion of memories from early childhood. If, on the other hand, they get to listen to different environmental sounds, they get most of the memories from the age of 11–20, just like sighted people.
Though blind people lack the sensory experience of colour, they can nonetheless – thanks to language – form rich and accurate colour concepts, Caramazza notes.
Use of a blindfold is said to enhance the remaining senses of the wearer, focusing attention on sound, smells and physical contact. This increased awareness is said to allow for greater excitement and anticipation by eliminating visual cues, as one cannot see what to expect.
The dreams of people born blind are more likely to have sensory components instead of visual elements, including smells, sounds, tactile sensations, and tastes. When visual elements are present, it is usually in the form of color or light in blind people who experience those same sensations while awake.
Things such as light and darkness help cue the body for sleep and wakefulness. Blind people also experience circadian rhythms. And most visually impaired people are able to sense light around them, despite not being able to see it directly. Furthermore, conscious and unconscious states are sensed by the entire body.
People who were born blind have no understanding of how to see in their waking lives, so they can't see in their dreams. But most blind people lose their sight later in life and can dream visually. Danish research in 2014 found that as time passes, a blind person is less likely to dream in pictures.
The dreams of a person who has been without sight since birth can be just as vivid and imaginative as those of someone with normal vision. They are unique, however, because their dreams are constructed from the non-visual experiences and memories they have collected.
They may wear sunglasses to protect against UV light, to shield their eyes from bright light, or for aesthetic purposes. Additional reasons blind people sometimes wear sunglasses include maximizing their vision, protecting against injuries, and communicating their blindness to others.
Most blind people with no perception of light, however, experience continual circadian desynchrony through a failure of light information to reach the hypothalamic circadian clock, resulting in cyclical episodes of poor sleep and daytime dysfunction.
Oftentimes, people would ask him what does he miss the most after he lost his sight. His answer is surprising for the most; darkness is what he missed. Many people tries to experience “blindness” by closing their eyes.
A person blind from birth typically doesn't see anything… not black, not gray, not white. It's like trying to describe what your elbow sees. One of the best approximations is to close one eye and describe what it sees.
Perhaps the most well known blind person was Helen Adams Keller (fig. 1), (June 27, 1880 - June 1, 1968), an American author, political activist, and lecturer. Helen Keller was the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree. A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled and outspoken in her convictions.
In general though, when it comes to blind people's eyes specifically, usually there is nothing wrong structurally but rather something called structural nystagmus-which means rapid jerking movements of their eyeballs involuntarily due to their lack of sight.
Blind people experience the world through their other senses, compensating for their lack of visual perception. They rely heavily on touch, hearing, smell, and taste to gather information about their surroundings.
Research has shown that people who are born blind or become blind early in life often have a more nuanced sense of hearing, especially when it comes to musical abilities and tracking moving objects in space (imagine crossing a busy road using sound alone).