Let me be clear. I am not particularly concerned with the individual whose residual vision allows him or her to perform most of life's tasks with age-appropriate skill and efficiency. If a legally blind or low-vision child is using regular print or large type without magnification and without fatigue or pain, and if he or she can travel independently and safely in unfamiliar areas, the alternative techniques of blindness may well not be necessary. However, when I hear that a child cannot read efficiently without magnification and that inability to keep up with assignments in school is accepted as a natural consequence of visual difficulties, I am deeply troubled by the culture of denial, fear, and misinformation which will ultimately result in a young person ill-equipped for college, employment, or community involvement. Part of the problem lies in the definition of legal blindness.
Many people are functionally blind, despite having visual acuity above that of legal blindness.
Another complication is society's fear of anything it doesn't understand. A teen-ager who refuses cane instruction because he or she will look different is going to progress from a difficult age to a difficult life of dependency and inability to experience the full range of possibilities for employment and recreation because he or she cannot go wherever the best job interview or the best party is. You can tell the child of a broken home who attends a poor school in a dangerous neighborhood that with belief in oneself one can surmount any personal obstacles. It is not acceptable for a child with poor vision to skate by, depending on special allowances and privileges, if he or she is capable of age-appropriate work. A child who is functionally blind and has average to above-average intelligence and no complicating disabilities should be handing in school assignments with everyone else, should not be fatigued by reading, and should be completing reading assignments along with sighted classmates.