Why Should You Care?

Because you will likely meet someone who is blind or visually impaired in your life. Statistically, you probably already have! You might even be blind or visually impaired in the future.

And when you meet that person, or those people, you can help. You can be the person who actually understands: something so rare it's practically a treasure!

What Even is Blindness?!

Being blind is more than just not being able to see. There are all different types of blindness! For example, I was born visually impaired because of a condition with a really long and scary-sounding name (optic nerve hypoplasia), which means I can see quite a bit compared to other people who might call themselves blind.

Blindness is a spectrum. Some blind people read print, while others read braille or use audio. Some use canes or guide dogs, others don't. Some can see a little bit, some can't see at all. Most people who are blind won't look that way at all!

In "Can I See?" there is an example of a visually impaired child as well as a child with little or no usable vision. You'll notice that Gavin, the visually impaired child, doesn't have a cane. At the beginning of the story, he has very little which separates him from the other children! Later, he gets a magnifier. Fae has a cane throughout her entire scene.

I didn't get to talk too much about their VIs in the book, but Gavin has ONH and Fae has ROP.
These illustrations came from my book "Can I see" on visual impairments.

When Gavin gets a new tool, he realizes that his visual impairment makes him different from the other kids in his class. Can he show them he's still a normal kid?