A new Perkins School for the Blind publication caught my eye today, How We See It: A Basic Guide to Low Vision (Dennis Lolli and Flo Peck, 48 pp., $20.00). The book describes how vision works, low-vision categories, how impairments may affect performance, and how to prepare children for low-vision examinations.

I applaud the effort, though when I see that one of its intended uses is “personnel preparation programs in special education,” I have this sinking feeling that its information is drawn more from ideologies in the blindness and education systems than the actual experiences of blind people.

I wish more books (or university studies) would explore the exact nature, i.e. experience of low vision. “I still don’t understand what you can and cannot see,” is a statement I still address, a quaking isthmus connecting the visual world with the blind. “It’s all about the fine detail,” I say, unsure if 20/20 vision would make a beautiful face more beautiful, or illuminate a thousand tiny flaws.

An effective, if cumbersome, way to map the world of low vision would be to have a fully sighted person spend a day with one who is visually impaired, make inquiries on what he or she can or cannot see in a variety of settings, and record enough results to establish some metrics more realistic than eye charts.

I know my vision is weaker than that of the woman who read me my road race time off a printout taped to a wall eight feet away; my eyes would had to have been inches from it. I then biked home along a highway with no doubts, never a thought about any potential vision-related mishap. Makes me wonder if there’s a vanishing point, a kinetic intersection at which visual acuity and adequate physical function start to diverge.

We should investigate low vision rather than label all visual impairments as “blindness” and insist shifting reliance from eyes to blindness tools. I think imperfect vision may yet yield keen insights on how we perceive disability.