I'd say this is a half-and-half kind of situation; there are those who understand us because they know people who have disabilities, and then ther are those (like the government in particular, or some schools, or organizations, and so on) that don't, and have bad perceptions of us because of blind-based organizations like the NFB and the ACB.

This is a rather broad subject, though it does fit into the scope Ethin described above in post 2.
There are a bunch of other variables; sometimes friends and family will take it and spin it both ways because it's advantageous to a particular situation.  An example would be if, say, you can demonstrate that you can ride a bike without crashing into obstacles.  The people who see it will then turn around and tell their friends, "So-and-so can do anything and everything you can do, and in some cases they can do it even better!"
On the other hand, if you can equally demonstrate thereafter that there are things you cannot do, the disappointment is evident and can and does become a judgment hammer.  "You're not pushing yourself hard enough!  You're lazy!  You're just wallowing is self-pity!  You can do anything and everything I can do!  What's that?  You don't have a driver's license and you can't get one?  That's no excuse!"
Then there's the other side of the coin.  If first impressions showcase you as a useless imbecile, you'll more than likely forever remain that way.  Go to a fancy dinner and have someone cut up your steak for ya?  Ask them to even help you find your table?  The chances of you being seen as an equall from there on out are rather slim, no matter what you demonstrate thereafter.
The bottom line is that there are people who do know how to deal with the fact that there are blind and VI people in this world, and there are a ton, perhaps the majority, who don't.  It reminds me of a particular parragraph in DC Comics's The Never Ending Battle, where the Martian Manhunter shows up and one of the two agents he shows up to help suddenly turns blazing guns on him and shouts out, "But, he's green!"  Respectfully but firmly, his superior turns to him and says, "That's right, and I'm black.  And you're white-Hispanic!  You gotta problem with any of that?"
Difference, by virtue of what it is, makes us all a little awkward at best, exceptionally violent at worst.  It's one of the many flaws we have as humans and the reason we need to keep ourselves as well tempered, sighted or blind, black or white, male or female, etc etc, as we possibly can.  People will always cast judgment; the privatization political correctness has brought about does not mean that people aren't judgmental anymore overall, but that they're not vocal about it.  It also means that people are afraid to ask questions for fear of beeing seen as ignorant hatemongers.  I'd like to think that humanity overall still possesses common sense, but all I need do to prove that this is a majorly false statement is look at the most recent lawsuits that have been filed, and lest you think it's only Americans doing it, let me quickly put your mind at ease on such matters and point out otherwise.

@Nocturnus: Well put. Though that goes for both sides, to. If you got sight and you come off as a lazy SOB.....that's not gonna change.

@Dark: Rant incoming....

Daredevil is fiction. Entertainment, made by companies who have far, far more sighted people consuming comics, videogames, uunderwear, whatever else Daredevil is licensed in, than blind people. THey don't want to tone Daredevil down because to them it isn't broken. And....read up on how much money Daredevil brings in. If you had a property that made that much money, would you want to alter it and risk losing millions of dollars in licensing deals, merchandise, all because a few people online are bitching about how a superhero isn't a good representation of your disabiltiy....when there's 99.9% f your fanbase are able bodied and consume the media as pure fantasy and an escape, which it is meant as? I wouldn't want to alter a cash cow for fear of pushing away a chunk of that audience and losing money. I get both sides of the argument, but until Daredevil stops bringing in millions and millions, nothing will change. Blind people will just be the whiners complaining on a tiny corner of the internet to the comic/movie/videogame/TV industry about one character. Because the fanbase is wayyyyyyyy biggr than a few random people.

@Ethin
Can you give a few examples that come to mind as far as blind organizations representing us poorly? I'm not disagreeing, I've just heard this said a lot, but I haven't kept up with either one enough to be knowledgeable. I know that it might be somewhat subjective, but I'm just curious...

People love those dollar signs! $$$$$$$$$$$$!

The problem seems to be purely attitudinal. People don't know, or are scared, or both. I say just keep educating folks. Some people are going to be assholes, and there's not much we can do about it.

Also @Chris:

Cultural, as well. Like I said up there in my first post....go to somewhere like China, or India, or Pakistan or South Africa, and note how blind people are treated there, go to Brazil, or Mexico, or Russia and note how blind people are treated. Actually, if you're going to go to places with a lot of ethnic groups, note how each ethnic group treats blind people, actually....

Also, education is not a magic cure all howevver.

Actually Jase I never mentioned dare devil. I personally really dislike most superhero fiction precisely for the generic plotting and stupidly invinsible characters you mention quite aside from any representational concerns, my comments were more generalised according to representations of blind people in pretty much all media I've encountered, even those forms of media where the individual author has far more control than the likes of dare devil and those dreaded committee based corporate franchises you mention.

If you take a look at the topic I referenced in post 5, there are lots of different examples of blind characters from films, computer games, books etc, and not many really have been well rounded characters, being either super or pathetic and always blind with a capital blind.

I however don't agree with you that "its just escapism" is an adequate answer.

Imagine viewing a film from the fifties in which the damsel is nothing but a woman who screams and get captured and the bad guys are a bunch of so called "black cannibals", I don't think saying "well its just escapism so relax" would be okay in this case.

I'm not saying I agree with the ""lets sue everybody" attitude either, but unless someone actually puts the point out there that no, blind people are  often not well represented in fiction, then we won't see too much by way of changes  attitude generally.

Indeed, this is one of the things I was rather hoping to do myself having got my Phd, write on precisely this sort of subject and its certainly something I bring up in book reviews, for example in my latest review for the ya novel Sanctuary by Carrin Lix which you can read here I note the rather commical point that the evil aliens shock horror have computers with raised letters! oh no! behold their strange alienness! while in my review of Birdbox by Josh Malerman which you can Read here I note his inadequacies in looking at a world where everyone must walk around blind folded.

Again I don't make a super issue of it, the vast majority of my reviews don't mention blindness at all, and I'm certainly not going  complain because shock horror, not all books have blind people in them, but when blindness comes up, I will put a word in if the representation isn't done properly, just as I would if we saw the appearence of the damsels and aforesaid black savages .

@3 what I found rather interesting is that islam has a positive outlook on blindness. I don't know much about it but I found when I was in Egypt for example rather than being treeted like i was inferior i was embraced everywhere i went and treeted with respect and curtacy. a friend of mine who is muslem had an arranged marriage: which i don't agree with but anyway, point is, her husband was actually really proud to marry a blind woman. that really surprised me. as a lapsed Christian i think we get certain impressions of other religions but Christianity has a lot to answer for when it comes to disabilities.

@JaceK, nice use of absolutes vs subjective ridicule in post 15.
To compare fiction to reality we have to take truth entirely out of the equation and just make movies for every particular individual in the world in order to make them even somewhat relevant to everyone.  I know blind people who can keep a house spotless freaky freaking clean; I'm not one of them.  I know blind people who can hear people breathing normally from across a room; I can't.  I know blind people who can do exceptional measuring on the fly... I can sort of do that.  I know blind people who can't use a computer and who need me to do just about everything for them when it comes to technology.  I know blind people who can't carry a tune in a bucket; thankfully, I'm not one of those!  I'm not saying I'm great at it, but I'm not one of the former side, either!
The point here is that to equally represent blind people on a fictional level you'd have to get up close and personal with every blind person who exists.  Some blind people seem to possess supernatural abilities; we obviously know they don't but have instead just adapted well to their environments to the point that they do things better than many others.  Some blind people have other disabilities as well as blindness; some of those disabilities make them exceptional and unique in their own ways.  There are blind people who can tell you on what day a specific date was, blind people who can remember things that happened to them when they were two years old, blind people who can tell you almost exactly what time it is based on their very environment.
And then there are blind people who you wish you could avoid altogether, but for every single one of those blind individuals you wish you didn't know I could probably point you to just as many sighted individuals who are just as bad as, if not worse than they are.

The thing with Islam is there's at least two sects of it, however. Also, since when did you wish you were a salamander, Chris?

Dark has a point on the Christian and Muslim kill the such and such's.  that having been said, I think to some extent I do agree with Chris on Christians automatically jumping the gun soon as they hear the newest member of their church is blind and wanting to bless their eyes and pray for miraculous healing.  Funnily enough, those are the same Christians who, when someone dies against their prayers of healing, either let go of God completely out of anger, or try to feed everyone else a bunch of spurious nonsense about God not having to explain himself and humans not being capable of understanding the reasons why God does what he does and how it's not right to question why these things happen.
I've said it once and I'll say it again, the greatest threat to the church is the church itself.  Christendom does not come together on most things, and that, is probably the saddest fact going for Christianity as a whole.  People who turn away from God or who have reasons to not seek out anything of the sort have too often done away with the idea of God in general because of what is reflective of the church and its people.  I'll take it a step further; if your pastor preaches nothing but fire and brimstone and how you will be infinitly judged for every finite decision you made in a finite life lived in a finite universe, you're probably not going to wana be there, no matter what the pluses are.

Random Encounter with would-be faith-healers is not too rare in the parts of the US I'm familiar with, but in the since that Random Encounter with a miniboss is not rare: most RE will be "Na, I've got it" grind-sessions, and those hardly give any XP after a couple levels.