Visually Impaired who enjoy to correspond?

[Morlock]

Yes, I thought it was an odd idea in some ways, but I recently got a PM on another site and other signs that people who are legally/technically blind do find ways to write stories and be pen friends. The PM was from a lovely lady who is very disheartened by how the online world is currently obsessed with images as it does her little good at all since she is blind. I wrote back to vigilantly agree with her and the unfairness was entirely true. (Having been a vision-therapist I completely understand.)

For me I'm obviously looking for correspondence with what I'm working on currently, but then again it would be fitting because I began that project due to a fictional character being made blind. It was the final straw for me.

Still, a new friend said, "Something is saying look for these people, Daryl. Look for the visually impaired people who want audio and to correspond. Something is really hitting a nerve with me there". I looked about to see if a thread about either topic was listed and came up empty.

So I thought I'd ask.

Thanks.

[SonOfTheExiles]

I have a vague memory from my childhood of a rather lovely article ... Reader's Digest, I think, back when ‎DeWitt and Lila Bell Wallace were still running it ... written to explain colours to someone blind since birth.

It did so by comparing different colours to the sounds of the various instruments of an orchestra.

I wish I could remember what it was called.


SOTE

[RuthieG]

I can't find the Readers Digest article, though I did find someone else who remembered it who thought that the trumpet was described as yellow. This is not a new thing, though, and clearly there isn't necessarily any agreement about the colour of a trumpet!

In 1690, the English philosopher John Locke published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke's work contained an incidental statement that a blind man had claimed the sound of a trumpet to be like the color scarlet. This prompted heated international discussions during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries concerning the possibility of correspondence between light and sound. Anthony Cooper (the third Earl of Shaftesbury), Henry Fielding, Adam Smith and Erasmus Darwin argued the issue in England, while Louis-Bertrand Castel, Mme de Stael and others considered it on the opposite side of the Channel. Understanding the nature of light was perhaps as important to the debate as the development of an art form that unified different modes of expression.

I am not generally a fan of wikihow, but this article looks rather sensible: http://www.wikihow.com/Describe-a-Color-to-a-Blind-Person

Slightly off-topic, but this 1911 article about synaesthesia would make an interesting addition to a non-fiction collection:
A Case of Colored Gustation
https://archive.org/details/jstor-1412797

Ruth

[Morlock]

So how do I contact the community of the blind?

[RuthieG]

http://societyfortheblind.org/ ?

Ruth

[Morlock]

http://societyfortheblind.org/ ?

Ruth

Bless you, Ruthie.

[bethesdalily]

I realize that I'm trying to revive a rather old topic, but since I have a vested interest in it, I'm afraid I can't resist. I have been blind since birth and my family had some difficulty trying to explain and conceptualize colors when I was much younger. I love the ideas you presented about colors being likened to musical instruments. For me, they have always been fabrics! Velvet in its myriad varieties has always represented various yellows; pinks are satin and silk; black is burlap and gray rough wool; purple is anything containing embroidery; green is corduroy; and white is fine, fine linen. Fascinating discussion! I really enjoyed reading your questions and some of the ensuing speculation/answers.

[Morlock]

Well, I guess it's somewhat old, but I still am in search of the right folks for what I need. Glad you enjoyed the discussion. Feel free to send a PM here.