Writing blind characters

Oh, hey, here’s a useful guest post at Terrible Minds, by Elsa S Henry, about writing characters who are blind or have limited vision.

So you were blinded by a tragic accident involving either fireworks or spilled chemicals?

For the last damn time, I am not Daredevil, okay. I’m blind because rubella in utero sucks and that caused me to end up blind (congenital cataracts), deaf and with a congenital heart defect. I’m not sure what the exact statistics are, but I know a lot more people who were born blind or went blind in childhood than who went through a tragic accident involving, I don’t know, 0464.

Lots of good points here, I think. I can offhand think of one blind character in SFF: Moira in Patricia Briggs’ UF series. This is kind of a funny example because Elsa Henry specifically has written about the blind-people-being-magic trope, aka Daredevil I presume, and here I go thinking of Moira, who of course IS magic.

Oh, Fawn’s grandmother is blind in Bujold’s Sharing Knife series, that’s another one. Of course she’s a minor character, but important to Fawn.

Honestly, I’m having trouble coming up with others.

A nonfiction title I’d read again if I were writing a blind character: The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks. I had absolutely no idea how different the experience of blindness can be for different people until I read this book.