Re: what I want
Well there is a lot I could say on this topic.
I do certainly agree with Aaron that audio can provide far more opportunities to engage your imaginative senses than just seeing everything visually, indeed I had a conversation about this subject with a sighted friend of mine who actually agreed that while reading a book and listening to an audio drama were experiencially similarly fulfilling, watching stuff on tv didn't have the same engagement.
The problem however is that there is another side to this coin. Because visual experience is so much more immediate, so much more instantly identifyable it can provide both far more pure informational content, and have a far more immediate emotional impact on an easthetic level. It is sort of the difference between hearing someone pouring cold water and actually getting it thrown over you.
This is why so many films get judged on visual appeal and certain things become so instantly iconic, that they have an image whi ch is immediate and arresting.
I myself am in the middle, I have to do a huge amount of interpretation to identify anything visually rather than get it instantly, but I still do have enough vision for certain sensations to become quite over whelming. I would not for instance have had half such an appreciation of the gate of the kings at Karnak in Egypt if I couldn't see just how damnably high the thing was! yet at the same time, I know I missed innumerable small details of carving, of the intracate hyroglyphics that others got for nothing.
I don't think it's unreasonable to desire that sort of visual experience, heck, even though i have access to a faction of it I still! feel missed out.
As I once said to my tutor, even in some ideal (and probably impossible), world where everything was accessible, where all information was as easily available to a blind person as to a sighted person, there would still be a freedom of choice to appreciate visual e xperience that blind people were lacking, just as a person who is born ddeaf will never have the freedom to appreciate the sound of wind or the sea. Of course, there is a lot else! but fully sighted or indeed fully hearing people equally have the choice to appreciate audio or visual things, rather than being biologically precluded from a large category of human experience.
At the same time however, I would be careful to distinguish what parts of the annoyence of living with a visual imparement is due to intrinsic biological prohibition, and how much is due to society making life difficult.
To take Ghost Rider's example, it is unfortunately in the nature of blindness that you won't get to appreciate the colourful drawings of commics, ---- however it is because of lack of access to the information that you don't get to experience the same sorts of stories in text or audio.
similarly, mobility is as much of a pest as it is precisely because! society makes life so dam difficult, none speaking busses, lack of readable signs, organizations who know nothing about blindness but pretend to, not the fact that the experience of the environment is in a none visual way.
Unfortunately these are all things that need to be lived with, which yes, is a pain in the arse!
On the mobility and independence front, I'm personally a very firm believer in just trying things out. Having a guide dog will help with mobility, but not if your not used to going around with a cane and working out where you are on your own anyway. I've talked about my land marks navigation method before, that works for me, but if you can find something that works for you it's worth trying out.
On the home independence living skills thing, it's very much a matter of working out what is doable and doing it. I didn't personaly have much by way of teaching sinse with a blind gran and a visually impared mum (she has only slightly bett er sight than me), it was just natural to learn as anyone else did. I used to be quite worried about burning myself with boiling water or similar, but once I'd done things enough I out grew that, especially when i went to university and had to live on my own, indeed now I rather like having my own flat and doing things for myself.
With hot drinks for example, when I was extremely young, under 11, I used to make drinks in the microwave. Then, when I was a teenager my mum bought me a small kettle which I used with a liquid level indicater. T
his held only about a pint of water, and could be easily held in one hand so I didn't have problems controlling the flow. I then progressed to a full sized kettle later, and indeed don't use an indicator anymore sinse I found when I wanted to drink propper ground coffee it wouldn't fit over the cafeteire. It's the same with other thi ngs, often the best way is just try something, after all the worst that can happen is a scolded finger which isn't so bad.
yes, it is a pest that all this is necessary, when for sighted people such things are infinitely easier, but the alternative is not doing things for yourself which is worse in the long run.
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