@98, re: ages 2-12: I feel the polar opposite, even excluding the part where my vision worsened in high school. (If anything, it got better when my vision got worse, but I don't think that has so much to do with vision as it does other things... but "better than 13-14" is a pretty low bar.
"Let's be honest, <something specific to the individual that is not as universal as the phrasing makes it out to be>" is one of those phrasings I'd really like to see less of.

... Which just brings me back to how Id rather the singularity / second coming / some manner of over-the-top miracle situation happen before I could be offerred vision, by itself. Sure, if I'm using it to lookat a screen the whole time, that's not so bad. But doing anything else, it'd be a constant reminder of everything else that's broken. What I had wasn't good enough for 21st century games, so really I didn't care too much when it worsened until I got a hold of a game it would have worked with that I'd been wanting for a while and couldn't make sense of it. Of course, I was in college at that point, so nothing important to daily life had gotten my attention yet, because we try to keep people as far away from real life as possible for as long as possible, these days. Really, I think there are loads of sighted people who could use a sighted equivalent of LCB and CCB. People get into their mid-late twenties or even early 30s, not knowing how to handle basic stuff. But then we'd have the sighted equivalent to NFB seminars, and I don't want to guess which political fringe that would , be and just lament that it would inevitably politicize generalized functioning. I think I might hate the 21st century.

Having said all that ... I've spent ... HOLYCRAP 18 YEARS trying to get around blindness to make games and videos etc, and have failed pretty hard. And I still drop things often enough for that to be a headache. Knowing that I can cope with being lost in the middle of nowhere, or that I can build various things out of wood, etc does help, but does not make it easier to undrop things, or to deal with people, or to play Kingdom Hearts. And how am I ever going to make it back to my home planet if you have to have 20/20 vision to be allowed into space?

This mentality of being just as valuable as an able-bodied sighted person, and being able to hold down any job mostly seems to stem from the NFB. I can't stand that organization! Independence is a good thing. It expands our freedoms, and can expand our horizons as we endeavor to try new things; however, independence at the cost of never asking another living soul for help is not. We are human beings, an order of social creatures. We need some level of socialization in our lives. Even the most introverted of people come to need it, as we're seeing with the  ongoing quarantine situation.

So yes, go ahead and teach life skills, but don't ever try to drill it into someone's head that it's wrong to ask for assistance. There's not a one of us that hasn't asked for assistance from someone before. Whether it's express or implied, we all have done it. This goes right to the core of what we are. Even as infants, our instinct is to cry out until we get what we want. Thus, it's against human nature to try to foster a complete sense of independence from any and all other humans.

There is much more that could be said, though it would deviate too far from the current topic to continue along these lines. Just know that vision is so powerful, that even as mine deteriorates, I still have my mental imagery in tact. Our brains are so well-equipped to process visual information, that low vision people can fill in the gaps from just a minute amount of detail.

I have never had the NFB say that you cannot ask for help.  And what is wrong with believing that as we move forward more doors open for the blind?  This is not an NFB argument.  This is me saying that you have a choice to be negative about the situation or you can grab the bull by the horns, pick yourself up by the bootstraps, step up to the plate, and other overly used sayings.

Ah but pulling oneself up by the bootstraps is what must be done.  I won't look down on anyone who would want sight.  Hell, go for it.

Let's see if I can reduce this down to its component parts, as I perceive it at least. This is going to apply to all disabilities, really, but I'm gonna focus on blindness because it's the one I'm an expert on.

Being blind does not make you less of a human being. You still have a right to love, compassion, assistance, support, and all of the generalized life opportunities everyone else gets. You might be a good person or a bad person, a kind heart or a complete jerk, empathetic or apathetic. These things, by and large, are not functions of your blindness; they're functions of your character, and the experiences you have while blind may help shape that character, but they are not wholly responsible for it. But you are no more or less valuable, as a person, because you have a disability. A lot of people, both the able and the disabled alike, don't seem to believe or understand this, but it needs to be trumpeted from the rooftops until it becomes innate knowledge. I believe that the NFB, misguided though they are in some ways, is trying to establish this baseline more than anything else. They are trying to convince blind people, as well as those who interact with them, that they are no more or less worthy due to their visual impairment.

However, being blind does make you less valuable in certain fields, the same way that being a paraplegic may make you less valuable in others, or having a cognitive disability may make you unsuited to certain environments. This isn't personal to you; it's just a fact. And because living comfortably requires the acquisition of a job, and because there are many jobs which are harder or impossible for people with visual impairments, it puts us at a financial disadvantage, and ties back to my first point. We can often feel devalued by society because of the way we are treated in the job market, or because the assets we offer are found wanting in fields that don't accommodate for our needs very well, or at all. This is largely society's fault, capitalism's fault, but it's not our fault, either due to our own individual aptitudes or our lacking of one sense or another.

I think that when a blind person says they want to stay blind because they'd miss audiogames, they're definitely not thinking of the big picture. It's a lot like saying "I don't want my arm reattached because this is a really cool stump I've got here, and I'd miss old Stumpy if I actually had an arm and a hand there instead.". I think there are other immature and unreasoned responses that we've seen in this thread as to why someone wants to stay blind, and a few equally silly reasons why a person wants to be able to see again, too.

But I do think there have also been a lot of good reasons here, including mine. If you can't actually make my sight usable, then it's going to be an unnecessary complication. Instead of just being a blind guy who can't do, say, thirty-seven percent of jobs, I'm now a partially sighted guy who can't do thirty-seven percent of jobs, and who also has to deal with really distracting visual input that he can't properly process, much less use effectively. No thank you.

The idea that one's blindness somehow defines one's identity is, I confess, a concept I don't fully understand. Sure, it is -part of one's identity, because it circumscribes one's abilities and may in some way contribute to the way one thinks and behaves. So fine, it's a part of one's identity. But blindness, in and of itself, is not an identity; to imply that it is suggests that there is no other relevant dimension to your life, experience or personality, and I find it hard to believe that anyone is so lacking in depth and breadth. I've lived nearly thirty-seven years on this earth without ever having met someone for whom blindness would make up their entire identity. As such, I see the "I won't lose my blindness because it's my identity" argument as pretty shaky. It might make up an aspect of your life that you don't want to be without, and to that I say fine. Do whatever works for you, I suppose. But it's not identity, it's habituation and aversion to change. And god knows most humans embrace the former and sympathize with the latter.

As someone who has been blind since birth, I can tell you that there are definitely moments where I wished that I could see well. It's by no means the sound track of my life, and it doesn't colour my every interaction with the world in which I live, but it does pop up, and I think that's okay. It doesn't make me weak for thinking this, and it doesn't make me strong for resisting those thoughts. I try and avoid self-pity, too, where I can, but even that will come up from time to time if something is especially frustrating. But alongside that, I can also tell you that true envy doesn't enter into it. I do not envy sighted people because they can do things that I can't. That's silly. There are individuals who can do things that I can't, full stop. Take disability right off the table. Canlorn can code well; I can't. Nocturnis can do music editing; I can't. Flip it around though. I can probably beat Canlorn in a game of chess (though I could be woefully wrong about this), and I probably speak better French than Nocturnis does (again, could be wrong about this). I don't want to waste time worrying about all the things other people do better than me, or worse than me, unless I am forced to compete with those people for resources that I need. At that point, it's not the people I get upset with; it's the fucked-up system which makes up compete over resources for basic needs, when this is not necessary in the slightest. So yeah, I'll have to do it, and I'll lose some battles due to my blindness; sure I will. But that doesn't mean I go around every day lamenting my lack of eyesight, and I think that reducing resistance to fear is shortsighted. Sure, fear is in there for many of us, but the "if you only knew" argument really doesn't hold a lot of water, nor should it. I'm practical. Give me workable sight with as few nasty side effects as we can manage, and I'll jump on it; until you do that, I'm not gonna jump. That doesn't make me afraid, immature or ignorant; that makes me prudent. I have a system that does work, even if that system is, by its nature, flawed. I'll admit those flaws; I know they're there, can account for them, can even make up for some of them. Some of the rest of us can say the same. For those who cannot say the same, who may, for instance, want to keep their blindness because they believe that their skillset is equal, or some other such nonsense, I urge you to read what follows carefully.
Having fewer skills is not your fault. Having lower levels of aptitude in certain skills is not your fault. None of these things are personal condemnations. But they're facts, and the sooner you accept these facts, the sooner you can make peace with your condition, with yourself, and with the world you are living in.

Okay, so two things here.

First, I don't believe you could solve neuroplasticity that way. I believe from what I've read that at this point, once you miss certain milestones, they're just gone. You'll never get them back, with what we know at present. You can't just filter out other distractions and ask the brain to retrain and expect good results.

Second, unless someone else can speak up and invalidate what I'm about to say scientifically, I want to slam down pretty hard on the whole "deaden hearing into a sense for pure communication like the sighted" argument. Many sighted people use hearing primarily as a sense for communication. Note that word "primarily". But virtually all sighted people use their hearing as a secondary or even tertiary resource. Just as one example, how many people do you think will become alert when they hear footsteps behind them, even with full sight? Or that rustle in the bushes? That dog growling while wagging its tail (yes, it happens). The creaking when you step on a particular floorboard? All sorts of things. I'm not saying that sighted folks use hearing as much or as constantly as we do, but to try and box it this way is just dangerous. It is not ever, ever a good idea to try and train your ears to react to only speech noises. Jesus, I can't even imagine being in that position. That's true whether a person has no vision at all, or perfectly functioning eyes.

Jayde, I understand what you mean about neuroplasticity and critical periods. The most  important one of these is language, or at least it appears to be, as can be seen by the case of Victor the wild child, and the case of genie.  The story of genie is particularly a tragic one. But I have yet to see any evidence that there also exists a critical period for vision. Language is a very unique system, and a complex one but there hasn't been any evidence that vision can't be re-introduced to the brain at some point.
Camlorn,  I actually did research on socio pragmatic competence and theory of mind in blind people   for my masters. I learned alot  about blind people getting the autism diagnosis, and my opinion is that blindness causes blind  people to share several trates with autism as a result of deprevation from visual cues as you said, however these defesits appear to be fundementally different from autism. Also, the criteria for making an autism diagnosis has visual findings heavily weighted, which contributes to the problem.
I really think though that software accessibility is going downhill fast. The number of fully usable applications decreases each day. Now when choosing an antivirus or other software, you choose the one you can use, not the one that offers the best features or protection.
Apliences are unfortunatly going all touch, which means you have to rely on smart ones to use them, which usually don't have accessible apps iether. But for washers and dryers,, if you have the option, you might want to get your own for ease of use and less frustration. When I was shopping for my own set, I  did alot of research,  and there is literally only one brand that offers blind specific accessibility features built in to their aplience. The smart Samsung machines are fully usable in combination with the app, the braille labels  next to the main buttons, and  the ascending/descending audio tones for all the options in counter options. But funnily enough, sighted people were bitching about  the audio tones for all the options, and how they can't turn them off  in the reviews, so I won't be surprised if they remove the accessibility features in the future. It is really a shame though that you have to only get specific apliences to be able to use them properly, instead of selecting among all available options for features you want or other qualities.

irrationally high expectations can also create stress, and cause depression when you will be unable to meet them. Ignoring blindness or other disabilities put you at a disadvantage and cause problems is like arguing the earth is flat. You can  burrie your head in the sand, but that won't change objective facts.

@114
Someone also worked out how to get some General Electric appliances talking by hooking into the maintenance port with an arduino, but I don't have the reference handy.

W.r.t. blindness and autism, I don't think that blindness itself causes autism in the sense that the underlying mechanisms are the same, but somehow half the blind people I've known over the years have also had some of the stuff that's hard to attribute to blindness like highly focused interests.  But I'm a programmer, most of my friends are programmers, and whether that's actually causal or not it's also a high correlation for such traits, so perhaps that's not surprising.

I guess we can pick apart the ways sighted may have advantages over the blind but why go down that rabbit hole?  As I said, it's about being happy with the way you are.

@kjsisco
No one is picking apart the ways the sighted have advantages over the blind.  There's no picking apart to be done.  It's blatantly obvious once you're living independently and holding down a job and doing all those things you're supposed to do as an adult.

being able to sweep the advantages of the sighted under the rug isn't about identity.  If you can do that you're either young, living in proximity to sighted people who help you out, or somehow you have more privilege than me and my 6 figure programmer salary.

I've had multiple job-related blindness stories, I've had multiple airport-related blindness stories, I've had multiple home-related blindness stories, I've had multiple college-related blindness stories.  I could probably think up a few more categories.  All of them caused problems, all of those problems wouldn't have been problems if I were sighted.  If you haven't yet built up a list of stories like this, if you haven't yet come to understand your limitations, then you should think long and hard why so many of us do have stories like this and what it might mean.  I promise that those of us who are talking about the advantages of the sighted, we're not being hypothetical.  I used to think like you do.  Then I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to actually go out into the world, to live alone without a support network, and push myself far enough to find the limitations.  That sucks in a way, though I actually prefer living alone without a support network over going back to Florida where I have one, but I also feel kind of sorry for you if you're an adult and have had a boring enough life that you haven't found the edge of what blind people can reasonably do.  I will warn you now: if this is the case, you're not prepared for the day that that happens to you.

You keep trying to turn this into some sort of blindness philosophy in order to ignore the purely practical points we're making.  Obviously we're not going to force you to take a cure if it existed.  But you're arguing against purely practical things with fortune cookie-style philosophy.  Your "blindness is identity" arguments don't help me or anyone else get to the grocery store.  They don't help us reroute around construction.  If you're living alone, they don't let you magically know just how bad that burn is.  They don't teleport us to work, or find the pill you just dropped before the dog eats it, or make employers consider us equal.  It doesn't turn getting stuck in some airport somewhere into anything less than a nightmare, or let you find your new doctor's office without Aira or somehow getting another human being involved.  It doesn't let you sense the electromagnetic emissions of your appliances to read their touchscreens, tel if there's mold on the ceiling, notice that the couch is stained and everyone has just been too polite to mention it.  It doesn't make the clouds move out of the way of the GPS signal, or the uber driver notice that maybe that blind guy is waiting on him.  I could go on.

All it does is provides you some justification to put your head in the sand, because obviously monstrously long and impactful lists of just what we can't do and what's harder that aren't things like fighter pilot that we nonetheless have to deal with every day is just picking apart the advantages of the sighted.  I've got news.  It's not picking apart anything, and it's not about the advantages of the sighted.  It's about the disadvantages of the blind.  You will have these disadvantages until there's a cure and you choose to take it.  The only control you have over that is whether you face them or avoid acknowledging that they exist, you're avoiding, and ironically avoiding actually just makes it worse because only when you face them can you find ways around or through them.

@120. No one is saying that they are not happy. are they? People are just saying that the sited have advantages over the blind which is true.