Tommy Edison Answers the Question ‘Do Blind People Understand Vision?’

Last month, we introduced GOOD readers to Tommy Edison, also known as “The Blind Film Critic.” Edison has a YouTube channel where he discusses the funny side of being blind and explains how he does everyday things that sighted people take for granted. This week, he answered an intriguing viewer question, “Do blind people understand vision?” For those of us who have the ability to see, it would be like asking us to comprehend a sense we don’t have, such as a whale’s echolocation or the ability to sense magnetic fields.

In the video, Edison reveals that he’s blown away by the concept of depth perception. Edison also cannot imagine how people catch moving objects. “Someone has to tell me, ‘Ok, there’s a ball coming, hands out’ … but you guys just see it,” Edison says. Another thing he doesn’t understand is how someone can draw a three-dimensional object on a flat price of paper. “Sculpting makes a lot more sense to me because it’s three-dimensional,” Edison says. “On a flat piece of paper, I don’t understand how you could see a car.” In the end, Edison believes that it’s all a matter of perception, literally. “As foreign as it is for you guys to imagine what my world is like—not being able to see, being blind my whole life—that’s how foreign it is for me to imagine what you guys do and how vision works.”