Symposium Proposal: How To Be Blind
For my symposium presentation, I want to go beyond the clinical definitions of visual impairment and dive into the lived experience. As someone with low vision, I know that people often lack a real understanding of what it’s like to navigate the world with impaired sight. My goal is to bridge that gap by offering a tangible, firsthand perspective.
This topic is critical because misconceptions and a lack of awareness can lead to frustration and isolation for many people with visual conditions. My own personal experience drives the concept of my symposium. I myself have encountered countless situations where a simple lack of understanding has created a barrier. And I have heard of so many others experiencing the exact same because of their visual abilities. By sharing my story and the stories of others, I believe we can create a more inclusive community inside the classroom and out. Instead of just hearing about low vision, the class will get to experience a simulation of it. This will challenge assumptions and encourage everyone to think about how their own environment might feel to someone with a different visual capacity.
My presentation will be interactive and experiential, not a traditional lecture. The core of my plan is to intentionally blur or distort my visual aids, such as slides and text, to mimic my own visual experience. The class will be invited to read or view the presentation as if they have low vision, highlighting the common frustration of accessing information that others take for granted. I may even have the class try simple tasks while wearing special glasses or goggles that blur their vision. This direct, kinesthetic experience will be my main tool for teaching the class on the topic, especially in a more impactful and memorable way.
My research will focus on personal and informal accounts rather than clinical data. I will use my own lived experience as the core of the presentation, providing an authentic foundation for the discussion. I’ll also gather stories from other individuals with visual impairments through casual conversations and social media. My goal is to collect diverse firsthand accounts that illustrate the shared and unique challenges of living with low vision. The interactive component of the presentation will also serve as a form of research; by observing the class’s reactions, I can better understand how people without a visual impairment respond to these challenges, which will strengthen my argument for the need for greater awareness.
This interactive approach is inspired by a project I completed in Experimental Studio II. For that class, I created a pair of glasses called StarGlasses, which are the basis for how I can share the low vision experience. The lenses were blurred in the same spots as my vision at the time, accurately simulating my visual experience with macular degeneration. For this final presentation, I hope to expand on that idea by developing a more diverse range of visual impairments and simulation methods.
Symposium Bibliography
APH — American Printing House for the Blind. “Living with Low Vision: Insider Perspectives.” YouTube video. February 26, 2021. https://youtu.be/f9884pHH8Hw.
“Can you describe the experience of being visually impaired or legally blind (not totally blind)?” Quora. Accessed October 29, 2025. https://www.quora.com/Can-you-describe-the-experience-of-being-visually-impaired-or-legally-blind-not-totally-blind.
Evelyn Hoekstra, “My Experience with Visual Impairment,” self interview, October 2025.
“What Is Having Low Vision Like?” Chadwick Optical, Inc. Accessed October 29, 2025. https://chadwickoptical.com/what-is-having-low-vision-like/.
Symposium Presentation
As artists and creators in this Experimental Studio, we are the ones who build the future. We design the posters, the spaces, the videos, and the experiences. So, the next time you are choosing a font size… The next time you are picking a color palette… The next time you are deciding how an audience will interact with your work… I want you to remember the frustration you felt wearing those glasses. Don’t design for the “standard” user. The standard user is a myth. Design for the person who needs to squint. Design for the person in the “limbo” of 20/70 vision. If you create with that person in mind, you create a better world for everyone.
How to Be Blind is an exercise in kinesthetic empathy designed to disrupt the passive consumption of information. As an artist living with low vision, I am acutely aware of the dissonance between the clinical definition of blindness and the lived reality of navigating a world built for 20/20 vision. My goal with this piece was to move the audience beyond the statistics of disability and into the friction of the experience itself.
The core of my presentation lies in the tension between the standard environment and the non-standard user. Ultimately, I chose to leave my visual aids entirely unaltered with sharp, high-contrast, and standard-sized slides. However, the audience was required to view these materials through modified safety goggles, each fabricated to simulate a specific visual impairment, from the “Swiss cheese” effect of Diabetic Retinopathy to the tunnel vision of Glaucoma. By refusing to adapt the slides to the audience’s simulated impairment, I replicated the daily hostility of the built environment. The frustration my classmates felt trying to read the screen was not a bug; it was the primary medium of the artwork.
This approach was critical because misconceptions about low vision create tangible barriers. Most people understand total blindness and perfect sight, but few understand the bureaucratic limbo between 20/50 vision (where one loses their driver’s license) and 20/200 vision (where one qualifies for government support). This is the space where I, and 1.2 million other Canadians, exist. We are often too sighted to be seen as blind, but too impaired to access the world freely.
I am passionate about this project because design exclusion is often invisible to those it benefits. During the presentation, the relief the audience felt upon removing the goggles was palpable. That moment of relief was the final, crucial conceptual beat of the piece, highlighting that for the able-bodied, disability is a costume that can be removed. For the rest of us, it is a permanent filter through which we must perceive the world. How to Be Blind argues that until we design for the “edge cases”—the squinters, the blurriness, the limbo—we are not designing for reality at all.
Live Art Ritual:
Script:
Traffic has stopped in both directions to let a girl cross the street. People in Miami never stop for pedestrians, except maybe in school zones. One car, driven by a man talking on his cell phone, pulls forward to plug the gap left by the car in front of him and moves into the path of the girl. I see him jump, like maybe she whacked the side of his car. His window goes down. I can’t hear what they say, but she nods, turns to her left, and walks around the front of his car. That’s when I see the white cane.
The blind girl stops, lifts her chin, and takes a deep breath. If occurs to me that, till now, she has been walking through thick, humid silence. I wonder, when there are no sounds, if it’s like moving through nothingness. Hearing the palm fronds rattle and leaves rustle must furnish the landscape for her. I’m reminded of sitting in the library last week when I cut classes, watching tree branches moving in the wind and deciding I’d rather be deaf than blind.
To get to the bay, she has to either continue on the path, which circles the entire park, or cross the grass and dodge the trees. If it was me, I’d stick to the path, but she uses her cane to find where the lawn starts and, with her nose held high, heads straight for the water. Maybe she’s planning to drown herself. I might if I was blind. This gives me a good excuse to stick close. If she wades in and goes under, I’ll be there to sound the alarm, and jump in to save her.
Instead of swinging her cane widely from side to side, she’s sweeping it in a narrow arc just ahead of where she’s stepping. I move around to get in front of her and realize she’s making a soft clicking sound with her tongue—like water dripping. I’m tempted to warn her she’s headed for a tree, but something about the sureness of her pace makes me think she knows it’s there. When she’s a yard or two away, she tucks the cane into the crook of her arm and keeps walking. The clicking turns to humming, and she begins turning her head from side to side. Two feet short of the tree, she reaches out, touches the trunk with her fingers, and runs her hand over the bark. “Gumbo limbo,” she says, and turns back toward the bay.
I fall in behind her and watch her check out every tree on her way to the water. Most are Australian pines; tree on her way to the water. Most are Australian pines; the last is a sea grape growing at the water’s edge. She stands near it and breathes deeply, then, using her cane, she heads for the park bench where the homeless man is now sitting up.
She stops short of the bench, as if she’s seen the homeless man. He’s been watching her, too.
“I’d like to sit there if you don’t mind sharing.”
The guy glances over his shoulder and sees me. “I was leaving.” He stands unsteadily, leans to gather up the newspaper, and almost falls over. “You want I should leave the paper?”
I gasp at his rudeness, and the girl turns in my direction. She smiles and faces him again. He isn’t exactly where she’s looking anymore. He’s stepped to one side. “Is it the Braille edition?”
“Ha. That’s a good one. I was blind myself last night.” When he says that, she adjusts where she’s looking to where he’s standing. “Do you have insight this morning, or just sight?”
It takes him a moment to interpret this, and he laughs. “Same as every morning: I can see, but ain’t too interested in keeping my eyes open for long.”
I’m thinking, How can you say that to a blind person? when the girl steps forward and puts her hand out. It’s about six inches to the right of where he’s standing, but he reaches for it, pulls his hand back, wipes it on his dirty pants, and shakes her hand.
“My name is Zoe.”
“I’m Dwayne.”
“Nice to meet you, Dwayne.”
“Wouldn’t be if you could see me.”
“I don’t agree. I see differently, but quite clearly.”
“Ain’t you blind?”
“I am, but that means I only see what’s important about a person, not their physical self.”
“Can I help you to the bench?” Dwayne says.
“No need. I do okay, considering.”
“I’d like to anyway.” He steps forward and takes her arm. “I’m here most mornings, if I don’t get run off by a cop the night before. Maybe I’ll see you again.”
“I hope so.”
He leaves Zoe on the bench facing the water, but not before he stacks the newspapers, brushes off the seat, and picks at a dried spot of bird poop with his index finger.
Dwayne glances at me. “Is that girl there a friend of yours?”
“Not yet.” Zoe looks in my general direction.
“Why would I want to make friends with another person with needs? I walk away. Not far. Just away.”
Artist Statement:
How to Read Blind serves as both a public confrontation and a private reckoning with my own visual impairment. In this piece, I read a specific excerpt from the children’s book, How to Speak Dolphin, which I first encountered a decade ago, around the age of ten. The chosen passage introduces the character of Zoe, a girl who is blind, and explores the main character Lily’s initial resistance to friendship, driven by a youthful misunderstanding and fear of “special needs.”
When I first read this book as a child, I remember tacitly agreeing with Lily’s perspective, this was a reflection of my own limited understanding of disability and difference. Now, ten years later, I stand on the precipice of that very world. My current low vision is uncorrectable and degenerative; I am one line on the Snellen chart away from being legally blind, and my future will inevitably involve total blindness.
This performance is designed to disrupt a personal ritual of avoidance as I have not read more than a page of text in nearly five years due to the difficulty my eyesight presents. By choosing to perform a live reading, I force an intentional act of struggle. The visible effort and moments where I stumble or pause on the words are not mistakes; they are the heart of the artwork. This live struggle with the text, paired with the narrative’s content about early encounters with blindness, creates a powerful feedback loop.The performance seeks to give a real, unvarnished presentation of what low vision looks like and how it impacts an everyday act like reading. It transforms a moment of youthful ignorance—my own and the character’s—into a decade-later moment of profound, visceral self-awareness. How to Read Blind is an act of disrupting fear with action, of reclaiming a once-beloved activity, and of publicly acknowledging a personal truth: the language of sight is changing, and I am learning, line by line, to read in the dark.
Moments Of Magic
Sound Object: Sound of a Sound
A sound is defined as “the vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear”. Another meaning of the word sound refers to “a narrow stretch of water forming an inlet or connecting two wider areas of water such as two seas or a sea and a lake.”
Artist Statement:
My sound object, Sound of a Sound, plays with the dual meaning of the word “sound”, both as an auditory phenomenon and as a geographical feature. I merge these two definitions into a single, quiet experience.
The core of this project involved an exploration of sound creation and amplification. My initial concept was to build a speaker from scratch, using a magnet and copper wire coil. I intended to utilize the map’s cone-like shape to replace a typical cup or cone structure, hoping it would help amplify the sound. Through experimentation however, I discovered that in simple speaker constructions, the cone is essential for translating the electromagnet’s vibrations into audible air movement, rather than pure amplification. After unsuccessful attempts to achieve a satisfactory sound quality with the handmade components, I switched direction. I chose to dismantle an old pair of headphones, repurposing the small functional speaker from inside.
My Sound Object is a topographical map of a geographical sound, specifically based on an actual body of water in Saskatchewan. The map is constructed from successive layers of cardboard, with each contour cut and joined together using hot glue. This sculptural process gives the map its cone-like structure. I then painted the finished topography to achieve a more aesthetically appealing and calming appearance, further emphasizing the peaceful nature of the subject.
The map is built onto a wooden frame, which allows for easy display and suspension on a wall. It is also equally compelling when displayed horizontally, inviting the viewer to look down upon the sound from a bird’s-eye perspective.
The repurposed speaker is discreetly mounted behind the bottom layer of the map, which is replaced by a mesh cloth to allow sound to travel through.
The sound emitted is the actual sound of a sound, gentle, ambient noise of waves and water. The speaker’s volume is deliberately quiet, demanding intimacy. This quiet nature draws the viewer in, closer to the work to understand its subtle depth, echoing the experience of being near a body of water where the natural sounds recede into a peaceful, calming background noise. The piece invites a moment of quiet contemplation, blending the visual representation of water with its ethereal auditory presence.
Speculative Video: Sonar Safari
Sonar Safari explores the speculative theme of sensory navigation and disability by imagining a world where I, a visually impaired individual, learn to navigate the world through echolocation, learning from nature’s masters themselves. Whales, Orcas, Dolphins, Shrews, Dormice, Tenrecs, Aye-Ayes, Oilbirds, and most notably Bats, all use this super-power like ability, so why not learn from the experts? Not only is this a fantastical idea, but it’s also almost humorous to imagine me spending time with each of these animals, mimicking their movements and sounds and trying to act like them.
Sonar Safari was deeply inspired by Lizzy Rose’s Sick Blue Sea, a piece that examines disability and its effects. Much like her work addresses chronic illness, my video addresses disability, through a more positive and playful lens. I was particularly inspired by Lizzy’s use of the whale as a representation of herself, which made me think of how a whale could represent me? As someone a part of the Low Vision community, I resonate with one part most in a whale, their reliance on sound, particularly Sonar, to “see” and move.
This idea of non-visual sight was further inspired by the work of Daniel Kish, President of World Access for the Blind. Kish, who lost his sight as a child, is a master of human echolocation. His ability demonstrates that the “absurd” skill I explore in the video is actually possible, anchoring the speculation in reality.
My body of work often addresses the topic of vision, but I aim to present it not as a negative or limiting factor, but as an opportunity for positive reframing. This video serves to challenge the notion that sight is everything, arguing instead that a rich and full life can be navigated using other senses.
To bring this concept to life, I employed a deliberately playful and scrappy technical approach. The process involved filming myself against a green screen as I attempted to mimic and interact with various echolocating animals, from tiny bats and shrews to massive humpback whales. I studied the movements and mannerisms of each creature and mimicked them by flopping around on the floor or balancing on a stool. The resulting messy footage adds to the video’s lighthearted tone. By depicting myself at the same scale as all the creatures, big and small, the video reinforces the idea that the “seriousness” often attached to visual perception is ultimately arbitrary. The resulting video is an exploration of the world through sound, inviting the viewer to join me on this acoustic adventure.
Sonar Safari is a vibrant, speculative journey that uses humor and unconventional visuals to champion the idea that we can learn new ways to see the world. It’s a positive statement on adaptation, demonstrating that limitations can inspire unique and powerful abilities, proving that non-visual perception is not a deficit, but a fascinating and attainable path to discovery.
Found Footage and Audio sources:
Aye-AyesJohn Tramp. “Aye-Aye Noises – the animal sounds: aye-aye noises / sound effect / animation.” YouTube video, 0:32. October 10, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrhSoWiTqC4.
The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. “Aye-aye Rare Madagascar Lemur – Cincinnati Zoo.” YouTube video, 2:22. June 23, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivh6DIznclk.
BatsMichael Durham. “Bats in Flight.” YouTube video, 1:41. July 20, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYzOwACodwY.
National Geographic. “Meet the World’s Biggest Bat.” YouTube video, 2:21. December 29, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FK9tWT5pA4.
NewportWhales. “Underwater Footage of a Common Dolphin Pod Echolocating.” YouTube video, 0:55. May 18, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4DcwaA4rOo.
DolphinsJohn Downer Productions. “Biggest ever dolphin superpod shot off coast Costa Rica.” YouTube video, 1:53. December 30, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpANEtKcfQY.
NewportWhales. “Underwater Footage of a Common Dolphin Pod Echolocating.” YouTube video, 0:55. May 18, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4DcwaA4rOo.
DormiceBBC Earth. “Finding the Notoriously Shy Dormouse.” YouTube video, 8:44. August 20, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vivJKwGyAEM.
Smithsonian Channel. “This Dormouse is Too Busy Eating to Watch for Predators.” YouTube video, 1:30. May 22, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejV3b4FfQYs.
OilbirdsJames Wolfe. “Oilbirds come to Costa Rica.” YouTube video, 5:29. October 23, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HAOEH65JNc.
Tim Forrester. “Sounds of Oilbirds (Steatornis caripensis) – Rio Claro, Colombia.” YouTube video, 2:38. April 18, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn7CKDzKzFo.
OrcaRed Bull. “Jacques de Vos Dives With Orcas.” YouTube video, 7:47. May 4, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK2aqcvSJto.
WWF-Canada. “Whale Sounds | Orca.” YouTube video, 0:27. July 8, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnUeHI0VpUM.
ShrewsNature on PBS. “Tiny Water Shrews Are the ‘Cheetahs of the Wetlands’.” YouTube video, 3:13. April 3, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRr-hqNBox8.
Wild Ambience. “Shrew Sounds – The high-pitched squeaky twittering calls of a shrew in a meadow in the UK.” YouTube video, 0:49. May 28, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT6wR8e1ays.
TenrecsBBC. “Madagascan Tenrecs Use Quills To Communicate – Madagascar, Lost Worlds, Preview – BBC.” YouTube video, 1:54. February 11, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9kJKu4cpXM.
Whales side + topDinoSasha. “Sound Effects-Humpback Whale.” YouTube video, 3:44. January 15, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6ixT6XosBg.
National Geographic. “Witness a humpback whale birth caught on camera in Hawaii.” YouTube video, 4:19. November 17, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQPAgFH96mQ.
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