faqs about my blindness

I get a lot of questions about my blindness, so to save me time and you an awkward conversation, I decided to make a list of the most frequently asked ones. These answers are specific to me, they won't always apply to another blind person but I'd rather have these available on my profile than have to constantly answer the same exact things

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How are you blind?
I get this one a lot and it's not exactly the right question to ask. The answer to how I'm blind is that my eyes don't work. But if you're wondering how I became blind, I was born albino, which caused my eyes to not have enough melanin to work.

What is your sight like? Can you still see?
I can see some light, some shapes if they're large enough like furniture. Some colour, but I've lost a lot of it.

How can you use the internet/ if you're blind?
I use a screen reader, it reads out text from the screen, so I can hear them and understand.

Do emojis or abbreviations work with a screen reader?
Emoji works with most modern screen readers as far as I'm aware, and they're a really useful tool for understanding tone. As for abbreviations, common ones work like OMG or WTF, but they're read out as letters. Uncommon ones are only read as letters if they're capitalised. 

How do you type?
On my phone, I either use the speech to text function or a virtual Braille keyboard (splits the screen into sections so I can type each of the six dots per letter). On my laptop, I use a QWERTY keyboard I was given special training for. 

Were you able to see when you were younger?
Yes, though my sight was never good. I became blind in 2022.

Can you even have hobbies or watch TV?
Yes! Audio description makes it possible to watch TV, watch movies, go to the cinema. A lot of blind people also love playing video games, especially Minecraft (which has a Narrator built in) and Pokémon (which was made to be navigated even without being able to read)

A blind person I know of can't do XYZ, so you must be faking!
That's not how it works. Blindness is a spectrum, no two blind people will be the same or have the same abilities. You can't use another person's experiences to dictate mine.

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If you have any other questions that weren't answered here, ask them in replies and I'll do my best to answer, or send you resources that can answer for me.