Maybe I can shed a bit more light on the subject of blindness and photography...
I am what you Yanks or Brits would call legally blind. In my case it means I have a very narrow vision field (tunnel vision) caused by a rare genetic disease that ultimately are likely to lead to what you probably think of as "blind", i.e. total blackness/darkness. Say a normal person "see" about 180 degrees. Put a finger up in front of your eyes and start to move it to either side of your head w/o following it with your eyes, but rater keeping your eyes fixed at a point straight in front of you. When you loose sight of it, well that's pretty much how wide your vision field is.
Personally my vision field is about 4-7 degrees. Means I can see my index finger but not my ring finger if I hold my hand up in front of me at 20-30cm distance. In terms of sharpness I'm not that far from the norm, I read just fine w/o glasses, but it takes "an hour or two" to look around a viewfinder to see if stuff is where I want it to be. Also, since the kind of light-sensitive cells on the retina that gives you some night vision, is the one that craps out with my particular condition, I can't see **** as far as it gets a little bit dark. Makes night photography an interesting discipline! 😉
My spesific eye disease, with slight variables, is one among maybe half a dozen different conditions that are the primary causes of "legal blindness". Other conditions may have effects like the more familiar (and curable) glaucoma or catarcts that cause harm to the the various lenses and membranes that focuses the light onto the retina, or might even damage the very nerve that transfers this information to the brain. Other conditions again, is the result of actual physical brain damage. Some of these conditions can be helped by surgery, most can't.
Now, the point of all this rambling isn't to let everyone know how much my vision sucks and that therefore I must be a genious photographer. I seriously ain't and I don't think any medical or mental condition should warrant instant canonization as artist. I'm rather interested in giving you a vauge idea of how many ways there is to be vision impaired. There's often even serious differencies between people with the same condition and age, some simply handle their disability better than others and function on a completely different level.
Without knowing for sure, but speaking from personal experience with the blind, I'm guessing that the majority of the blind photographers have at least some remaining vision, even if it is very poor. Even if you are almost completely blackish blind, most still separate bright and dark light for instance. Also, many vision conditions progress/worsen over time, meaning the individuals will often have a pretty good idea of how the world looks like, even if they can't see much of it anymore.
That said, I really believe that vision impaired, or blind if you like, get a different perspective of the world, and that this may, or may not be interesting. Very simplified you could say that some of the common effects blind experience is like swapping a 20mm lens for a 150mm, soiling the lens front element with vazeline or using special effect filters from Cokin with stars, blobs and whatnot.
Hope this is somewhat interesting, otherwise, feel free to ignore my information 😉 If you think that I am a jerk, please do not judge all blind/vision impaired on behalf of me.
/Mac
Ps. The reason I dable in photography is that I like it and find the process enjoyable. Also I want to leave something behind me "as I saw it", even if only for potential kids or my family. Truth is, I haven't got that many years left as a photographer, my vision slowly fades away, I'm 27 now and I "got" a decade maybe. so I got to do this while I still can.
