By Laura Millar, MPH, MA, MCHES
Listen to the full Deep Dive podcast episode here: Beyond the Sensory Deficit: Why Blindness Belongs in the Neurodivergent Spectrum
About This Episode
In this Deep Dive interview, AI-generated hosts Alex and Storm explore a paradigm-shifting question: Is blindness a form of neurodivergence?
This interview was compiled and generated by NotebookLM based on my writings, research, and lived experience as a public health professional, sociologist, and neurodivergent blind woman. I started exploring these topics on both personal and professional levels because the existing frameworks simply weren’t capturing the full neurological reality of blindness.
Through compelling neuroscience, personal narrative, and systemic critique, this interview makes the case that blindness isn’t just a sensory impairment—it’s a profound neurological difference that deserves recognition within the neurodivergent spectrum.
Important Disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional. I was drawn to exploring these topics after the diagnostic system failed me in my own journey seeking answers. When I joined a Facebook group called “Lost Focus,” made up of blind neurodivergent individuals, I realized how remarkably similar our stories were—and how little information exists about the connection between blindness and neurodivergence. While mental health is not my professional field, much of this writing draws from my experience and training as a public health professional and sociologist. I look forward to learning more as I open this dialogue and welcome engagement, feedback, and collaboration from researchers, clinicians, and community members as we explore these ideas together.
I’d love to hear from you. Whether you’re part of the blind community, identify as neurodivergent, work in disability advocacy, or are simply curious about these ideas—please reach out. Your perspectives, questions, and experiences matter to this conversation.
Key Topics Explored
- Neuroplasticity and Brain Rewiring: How blindness triggers cross-modal recruitment in the visual cortex
- Executive Function Changes: The cognitive load of processing a non-visual world
- Diagnostic Barriers: Why current assessment tools fail blind individuals seeking neurodivergent diagnoses
- The Medical vs. Social Model: How both frameworks fall short in recognizing neurological identity
- Advocacy and Accommodation: What changes when we reframe blindness as neurodivergence
- Community and Belonging: Finding identity at the intersection of blindness and neurodiversity
Why This Matters
This conversation isn’t just theoretical—it has real implications for:
- Accommodations in schools and workplaces that address cognitive differences, not just access barriers
- Mental health support that validates the neurodivergent experience of blind individuals
- Community solidarity between blind and neurodivergent advocacy movements
- Systemic equity that recognizes neurological diversity as human diversity
Disclaimer
For those unfamiliar, Notebook LM is an AI-powered tool developed by Google that helps users organize, summarize, and generate content from their notes and research materials. It can create audio summaries, study guides, and more, making it a powerful tool for learning and sharing information. As someone still new to using this type of technology, I’m still learning how to fully edit and refine the outputs. While this episode may contain some imperfections, I believe it includes valuable information worth sharing. Thank you for your understanding as I continue to explore and improve with this tool!
Connect & Support
If this conversation resonated with you and you’d like to support more content that challenges conventional thinking about disability, neurodiversity, and advocacy:
💜 Support on Patreon: patreon.com/lauramillar – Join this growing community and get exclusive content, early access to episodes, and behind-the-scenes discussions. Your support helps fund research, accessibility features, and ongoing advocacy work.
Visit my website: www.lauramillar.com – Learn more about my coaching, consultancy, and research services focused on sexual health, disability justice, and building inclusive environments. Reach out to collaborate or explore how we can work together.
Every share, comment, and conversation helps amplify these conversations. Thank you for being part of this movement toward true cognitive equity.
Episode Sources
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Armstrong, T. (2010). Neurodiversity: Discovering the extraordinary gifts of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other brain differences. Da Capo Lifelong Books.
Baron-Cohen, S. (2008). Autism and Asperger syndrome. Oxford University Press.
Conversation with Bing. (2023, December 16). [Personal communication].
Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M. C., & Mandy, W. (2017). “The Female Autism Phenotype and Camouflaging: A Narrative Review.” Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 4(4), 306-317.
Merabet, L. B., & Pascual-Leone, A. (2010). Neural reorganization following sensory loss: The opportunity of change. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(1), 44-52.
Oliver, M. (1990). The politics of disablement. Macmillan.
Shakespeare, T. (2014). Disability rights and wrongs revisited (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Singer, J. (1998). Odd people in: The birth of community amongst people on the autistic spectrum. [Honors thesis, University of Technology Sydney].
Verywell Mind. (n.d.). Neurodiversity and what it means to be neurodiverse. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-neurodiversity-5193463
Walker, N. (2012). Throw away the master’s tools: Liberating ourselves from the pathology paradigm. Neurocosmopolitanism. https://neurocosmopolitanism.com/throw-away-the-masters-tools-liberating-ourselves-from-the-pathology-paradigm/
Wong, M., Gnanakumaran, V., & Goldreich, D. (2011). Tactile spatial acuity enhancement in blindness: Evidence for experience-dependent mechanisms. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(19), 7028-7037.
Big Think. (n.d.). Neurodiversity: How unusual minds bring hidden strengths. https://bigthink.com/plus/neurodiversity-how-unusual-minds-bring-hidden-strengths/
Cleveland Clinic. (n.d.). Neurodivergent: What it is, symptoms & types. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23154-neurodivergent
Harvard Health Publishing. (n.d.). What is neurodiversity? https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-neurodiversity-202111232645
Open University. (n.d.). Neurodiversity: What is it and what does it look like across races? https://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/mental-health/neurodiversity-what-it-and-what-does-it-look-across-races
Deep Dive Podcast Transcript
Alex: Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are taking on a really fascinating, pretty complex topic. It’s driven by a very profound personal inquiry, actually. And we’re pushing it straight into the realm of, well, neurological science and advocacy. We’re diving into a discussion that really challenges the very foundation of how we categorize sensory difference versus cognitive identity.
Storm: Yeah, our focus today is that powerful interception of blindness and neurodiversity, and like you said, this isn’t theoretical. We’ve actually been asked to explore the journey of a public health professional, Laura Millar.
Alex: Right. She identifies as blind and also as neurodivergent, and she finds this classification isn’t just, you know, helpful for her personally. She sees it as absolutely essential for advocating effectively, both for herself and for her community. So our mission for you, the listener, is really to move beyond maybe the superficial definitions we usually hear.
Storm: Yeah. We want to understand why blindness remains almost universally treated as, well, a purely sensory deficit.
Alex: Right. This is what the eyes.
Storm: Exactly. When the overwhelming lived experience, and frankly, the scientific evidence, too, suggests these profound, documented neurological and cognitive differences… we really need to grasp why shifting this framework is so important.
Alex: Yeah, moving from sensory deficit to neurodivergence.
Storm: Precisely. Why that shift might be the critical next step for getting better accommodation, deeper recognition, and ultimately achieving true systemic equity. Okay, so, maybe let’s start by setting the stage a bit. We should probably establish your context. Neurodiversity, um, at its simplest, it’s the idea that differences and how our brains are wired are actually a natural and valuable part of human variation. Like biodiversity, but for brains.
Alex: Exactly. That’s a great way to put it. Now, while technically the term applies to everyone, because all our brains are different in advocacy circles, and definitely in medical settings, it’s kind of come to denote specific conditions. Things like autism spectrum disorder, ADHD.
Storm: Right. ASD, ADHD, dyslexia, other conditions that involve, you know, significant differences in how people process information, manage attention, or handle executive functions. That’s the common usage we see. Okay, and right there is where the conflict that really sparked this whole inquiry comes in. Because when our contributor, Laura, posed a simple, direct question, just an honest intellectual query to an AI. About whether blind people are neurodiverse.
Alex: Yeah, exactly. The answer she got back was, well, it was a perfect illustration of how rigid the current system’s thinking is.
Storm: It really was. The AI I think it was being in this case. It just delivered the swift, very categorical rejection. And it was based purely on current medical definitions.
Alex: What’s did it actually say?
Storm: It essentially said, “Nope, blindness is strictly a sensory impairment. It’s not considered a neurodevelopmental condition. Full stop.
Alex: Pretty much. And the logical conclusion presented was, therefore, blind people are not neurodiverse by definition, unless, and this was the only caveat, unless they happen to have a co occurring condition, like maybe diagnosed ASD or ADHD. So, you can be blind in neurodiverse, but blindness itself isn’t the source of that neurodiversity, according to the AI.
Storm: Exactly. The only tiny nod toward any complexity was this brief mention that, well, some blind individuals might identify as divergent, because they’re non visual way of processing fundamentally changes their cognitive experience. But it framed it as identity, not inherent neurology.
Alex: Wow, so that AI response, which is basically just reflecting the current institutional consensus, right? It forces the entire blind experience into this really narrow, purely sensory, non neurological box.
Storm: It does. But the personal journey that Laura Millar shared, the one that prompted this. She lives with retinitis pigmentosa, right? Experienced a gradual decline over something like 20 years. Her story shows exactly why that definition just doesn’t cut it. It feels completely insufficient.
Alex: Absolutely. The acquired nature of her blindness is actually key here for illustrating that cognitive shift she experienced. The sources detail how she used to rely heavily on being a highly visual learner.
Storm: Okay, so what did that look like for her before the vision loss really progressed?
Alex: Well, her memory retention, her organization, it was all deeply integrated with visual cues, things like, um, color coding for task priority, using the spatial layout of Doodles on a page to map out ideas.
Storm: Oh, interesting, like mind mapping, but visually ingrained.
Alex: Exactly. And even using different highlighter colors as memory anchors for specific information. Her whole system was built around sight.
Storm: So she was literally using the visual world as the framework for her internal thinking or cognition.
Alex: Precisely. And so, as that visual channel gradually closed off, it wasn’t just that she couldn’t see the color coded calendar anymore, which she described was losing the cognitive scaffolding that that visual structure provided her.
Storm: Oh, okay, so the tool was gone, but also the mental process tied to that tool.
Alex: Right. She essentially had to replace decades of these deeply ingrained visual processing habits with brand new methods. Non visual ones, auditory strategies, tactile organization systems. It forced this massive neurological reevaluation of how she managed tasks, information, everything.
Storm: And what’s really fascinating here is how the sources connect this struggle, this adaptation directly to executive functioning.
Alex: Yes. The observation was that what might have started as maybe minor manageable neurodiverse traits for her, perhaps light struggles with focus or task initiation, things many people experience.
Storm: Mm hmm.
Alex: Those traits transformed into a much more pronounced, much more challenging experience as her visual input diminished, as that cognitive support system disappeared.
Storm: And that specific observation is incredibly telling, scientifically speaking. Executive functions things like our working memory, our ability to think flexibly, inhibitory control, planning, they rely very heavily on efficient sensory processing.
Alex: Okay, how so?
Storm: Well, think about it. When you remove or significantly degrade the primary sense, which for most humans, the brain has to divert massive cognitive resources, just to process and interpret the incoming non visual data. Making sense of the world through sound and touch alone is complex work.
Alex: Right. It’s constant translation process.
Storm: It is. And this increased cognitive load, just the effort of navigating and understanding the world non visually, directly impacts the mental resources available for those higher level executive tasks.
Alex: So let’s bandwidth left for organizing planning, staying focused.
Storm: Exactly. And that can lead to observable behavioral and processing differences that, frankly, mirror many recognized forms of neurodivergence, like ADHD or certain aspects of ASD, the outcome looks similar because the underlying cognitive resources are similarly strained or deployed differently.
Alex: Okay, so if the loss of a major sensory channel fundamentally changes executive function, focus, memory, strategies, organizational approaches… You know, the very characteristics we often use to define neurodiversity.
Storm: Hmm.
Alex: How can we possibly keep maintaining this fiction that blindness is only a sensory issue?
Storm: It just doesn’t track. This documented shift in cognitive experience seems like powerful evidence itself.
Alex: It absolutely does. And it leads us directly to the core scientific counter argument against that narrow definition.
Storm: Yeah, let’s really challenge that status quo… Because the argument being made here in the one Laura Millar is advancing isn’t just a hopeful theory or a feeling. It feels like it’s grounded, in fact, backed by decades of neuroscience.
Alex: It is. Blindness, fundamentally, structurally rewires the brain, that’s documented. So why are we as a community or as individuals exhausting ourselves, trying to maybe get external labels for focus issues or attention differences, or sensory processing sensitivity? And the underlying condition itself.
Storm: Right.
Alex: When blindness itself is already the definition of a neurologically distinct experience.
Storm: Yeah. It seems like we’re missing the foundational point. We have to anchor this claim firmly in neuroplasticity. This isn’t controversial science. It’s the brain’s remarkable, well documented ability to reorganize itself. It forms new neural connections throughout life in response to experience, injury, or sensory changes. And blindness is a major trigger for that reorganization.
Alex: One of the most profound triggers studied. Blindness doesn’t just result in a lack of visual input reaching the brain. It triggers aggressive, surprisingly rapid neuroplastic changes that actually repurpose vast areas of this cerebral cortex.
Storm: Repurpose them?
Alex: Yes. This isn’t just theory. It’s the biological proof that the blind brain is structurally and functionally. A neurologically distinct brain compared to a typically sighted one.
Storm: Okay, this is where the detail really matters, I think. When we talk about specific neurological adaptation, we’re not talking small tweaks, we’re talking about significant brain real estate getting completely rezoned, right?
Alex: We are talking very specifically about the occipital lobe. That’s the visual cortex located right at the very back of your skull. In a sighted person, that area is the command center for processing everything you see. If it gets significantly damaged, you lose vision. It’s the seeing part of the brain.
Storm: Correct. But in individuals who are blind, especially those with early onset or congenital blindness, that huge chunk of brain doesn’t just go dark or become dormant because there’s no light coming in. It starts what neuroscientist call cross modal recruitment.
Alex: Cross modal recruitment? Okay, what does that look like in practice? How does that rezoning actually work?
Storm: Well, numerous studies using advanced brain imaging, like fMRI and EEG technology, they consistently show the same thing, that visual cortex starts activating in response to non visual stimuli.
Alex: Like sound or touch.
Storm: Exactly. That’s cross modal plasticity in action. So, for instance, when a blind individual reads Braille, fMRI scans shows strong activation and parts of their visual cortex.
Alex: Wait, the part designed for seeing complex shapes and patterns is now processing tiny raised dots felt by the fingertips.
Storm: Precisely. The brain regions typically associated with perceiving visual form and texture, are now intricately involved in processing that complex tactile information, and it’s not just touch. When blind individuals engage in complex auditory tasks like trying to pinpoint where a sound is coming from in space, or processing complex language, especially in noisy environments areas within occipital cortex, often light up on the scans.
Alex: Okay, that’s genuinely mind blowing. The part of the brain literally designed evolutionarily speaking, to see, is now actively helping the person hear better and feel with more discrimination. That sounds like the absolute definition of a fundamentally restructured brain.
Storm: It absolutely is. This process is concrete evidence that the brain innovates. It adapts, it reconfigures itself in a way that fundamentally alters its structure and its function compared to a sighted neurotypical brain. This rerouting, this permanent neurological divergence from the expected structure. That is the essence of neurodivergence. It directly refutes the idea that there’s only one single, normal, or typical brain pathway.
Alex: And thinking about it, this naturally leads to those unique, cognitive differences, sometimes even perceived strengths. They’re often observed within the blind community. It suggests it’s not just about compensating for what’s missing.
Storm: Right.
Alex: It’s about the brain actually maximizing the new configuration that’s developed.
Storm: That’s a much better way to frame it than just compensation. Research really does indicate that this adaptive rewiring often leads to unique cognitive strengths, not just coping mechanisms. Blind individuals, for example, frequently demonstrates superior auditory discrimination.
Alex: What does that mean in real terms?
Storm: It means they can often differentiate sounds more accurately, locate objects just by using echo or very slight acoustic cues, think echolocation and process speech much efficiently, especially when there’s background noise.
Alex: Which makes sense that parts of the visual cortex are potentially lending processing power to the auditory system.
Storm: It does, and similarly, they often exhibit higher tactile acuity, more sensitive touch, and can achieve much faster tactile reading speeds, like with Braille, than you might expect just from practice alone. There seems to be a neurological enhancement at play.
Alex: So that really sounds like a cognitive advantage, or at least a significant cognitive difference.
Storm: Mm hmm.
Alex: That resulted directly from a different way processing the world.
Storm: Mm hmm.
Alex: It completely moves the discussion away from just trying to fix a deficit.
Storm: Mm hmm.
Alex: And towards recognizing a uniquely adaptive, potentially optimized system.
Storm: Yes. And when we apply that neurodiversity paradigm here, we see these abilities not as some kind of miraculous correction for a deficit, but as a clear demonstration of adaptive rewiring, that results in unique strengths. It perfectly mirrors how the broader neurodiversity movements advocate for conditions like dyslexia or ADHD.
Alex: Well, those movements often highlight the associated strengths, like potentially enhanced pattern recognition skills in dyslexia, or the ability for intense hyperfocus in ADHD. It’s about recognizing that cognitive differences aren’t necessarily defects. They represent different profiles of cognitive efficiencies and challenges. It validates the whole idea.
Storm: And the lived experience, as Laura Millar and others describe it, seems to confirm this reframing completely. The sources mentioned conversation she’s had with blind mental health professionals, educators.
Alex: Yes.
Storm: And they all validate this reality. The sheer cognitive effort involved in just organizing a non visual world day to day, the heightened risk of sensory overload, especially in complex or loud auditory environment.
Alex: It was a huge issue.
Storm: Right, and the different kinds of strategies required for managing focus and attention when you don’t have visual anchors, it all points to a different cognitive landscape.
Alex: Yeah, despite all this neurological proof, despite this widely shared cognitive reality among blind people, the systemic framing just remains stubbornly stagnant. Blindness is still largely treated institutionally, as a purely sensory difference, or worse, as just a clinical medical problem that needs to be fixed or cured. And that rigid definition, it actively erases or ignores all these documented, inherent, cognitive, and neurological adaptations we’ve discussed. The very adaptations that are arguably the undeniable hallmarks of neurodivergence.
Storm: It’s a fundamental disconnect.
Alex: It really is. It’s clear that our current dominant frameworks for thinking about disability, even the well intentioned ones, are just insufficient. They don’t capture this neurological reality. So let’s break down that systemic disconnect. Why does this exclusion exist? What models are holding us back?
Storm: Yeah, we really need to critique the existing models of disability, because they’re the ones perpetuating this narrow view, the oldest, and probably still the most pervasive, is the medical model.
Alex: Okay, the medical model. That’s the one that essentially views the individual’s impairment as the core problem.
Storm: Yeah, yeah, correct. It treats blindness fundamentally as a pathology. A broken sensory apparatus. Something wrong with the eyes or the optic nerve that needs repair or a cure, or maybe technological replacement designed to mimic the lost sense as closely as possible.
Alex: So the focus is entirely on fixing the biological defect.
Storm: Entirely. Its whole focus is on what is lost, the deficit compared to a sighted norm, and crucially, for our discussion, it completely ignores the cognitive revolution that’s happening inside the brain as a result of that sensory loss. It essentially says, “fix the eyes or simulate sight, but it never asks the question, “How has the brain adapted to function brilliantly in a non visual reality?
Alex: So it fails to recognize the inherent neurological identity that’s forged by blindness itself.
Storm: Exactly. It sees only the sensory lack, not the cognitive transformation.
Alex: Okay, so then we have the social model of disability. Now, that one attempts to shift the focus, shift the blame, really, from the individual to the environment, which sounds much more empowering, but you’re arguing it still falls short in this specific context.
Storm: The social model has been absolutely vital, let’s be clear. It was revolutionary, because it correctly identified societal barriers, things like inaccessible websites, buildings without ramps, lack of audible signage, discriminatory attitudes as the primary cause of disability, rather than the impairment itself.
Alex: Which is crucial for advocacy, obviously.
Storm: Absolutely. But it’s limitations, specifically when we’re talking about the neurodivergence of blindness is its strong external focus. While demanding ramps and screen readers is essential for access, the social model often neglects the inherent internal cognitive complexity of living without sight.
Alex: How so?
Storm: It tends to see blindness primarily as a barrier to external access getting information. Moving around not necessarily as a profound difference in internal processing, it doesn’t fully acknowledge that even if you created a perfectly accessible utopia tomorrow, a blind person’s brain would still process information, manage attention, and experience the sensory world neurodivergently. It often overlooks that neurological identity piece.
Alex: Okay, so we end up with this kind of false economy.
Storm: Hmm.
Alex: Society might grudgingly agree to build a ramp or provide a screen reader, addressing the access issue.
Storm: Right.
Alex: But it remains largely unwilling to accept that the person using that ramp or a screen reader is likely experiencing a foundational difference in their neurology, a difference that requires more than just physical or technical access tools.
Storm: That is the key disconnect right there. We have largely accepted, particularly thanks to the tireless advocacy work within the Autism community, that significant differences in sensory processing a unique executive function profiles necessitate a neurodivergent label and corresponding supports.
Alex: Right. Things like needing quiet spaces, different communication styles, structured routines.
Storm: Exactly. And those very same traits, heightened sensory sensitivity, especially auditory, challenges with executive function and navigating a world not built for non visual processing are demonstrably and acutely relevant to blind individuals. Yet we resist applying the same neurodivergent framework, the underlying cause of that cognitive difference, which is blindness itself.
Alex: And this systemic resistance, this refusal to see blindness through neurodivergent lens leads to immense frustration for people seeking validation, doesn’t it? The sources highlight that many blind individuals feel these distinct cognitive differences very strongly.
Storm: Mm hmm.
Alex: And they end up resorting to questioning themselves, “Wait, do I have undiagnosed ASD? Could I have ADHD?” They start seeking these other external labels, just a validation for an experience that feels deeply inherent to their blindness.
Storm: They do. And then they often run headfirst into massive systemic barriers when they try to pursue those diagnoses.
Alex: It sounds like a catch 22.
Storm: It really is. Because those diagnostic processes themselves, the tools we used to assess for conditions like ASD or ADHD, are often fundamentally rooted in ableist visual centric assumptions. They inherently disadvantage or misclassified blind individuals from the outset.
Alex: Can you give us some more concrete examples? How do these diagnostic tools actually show that visual bias in practice?
Storm: Sure. Take, for instance, many common assessments used for diagnosing autism spectrum disorder. They often rely very heavily on evaluating specifically visual behaviors.
Alex: Like eye contact?
Storm: Exactly. Measuring the frequency and duration of eye contact, assessing joint attention by seeing if someone follows a pointed finger or gaze, evaluating subtle facial expressions during social interaction. A blind child or adult simply cannot meet these criteria in the expected visual way.
Alex: So they’re adaptive behaviors get misinterpreted?
Storm: Precisely. Behaviors that are necessary adaptations for non visual interaction, like maybe turning their head to focus precisely on an auditory source instead of making eye contact, or using highly specific, maybe repetitive tactile exploration to gather information about an object or person. These can be easily misinterpreted by a diagnostician unfamiliar with blindness.
Alex: So a necessary adaptation, let’s say, using a repetitive hand movement, like tactile skimming, for self regulation or focus in a non visual environment that gets read by the clinician as a symptom of a separate condition like autism, rather than being understood as an integrated, necessary cognitive strategy developed precisely because of their neurological reality as a blind person.
Storm: That’s exactly the danger. Or consider ADHD assessments. They often use visually presented materials for testing working memory or processing speed. They might involve visual organizational tasks, like sorting cards or arranging pictures, or they ask questions about organizational methods that implicitly rely on visual tools, like using planners, calendars, or color coded checklists. Tools that might be completely irrelevant or inaccessible.
Alex: Right.
Storm: These assessment tools often fail to recognize or inquire about how a non visual brain might organize time, space, and attention, using auditory cues, tactile systems, or spatial memory. The system is looking for specific visual evidence of function or dysfunction that simply isn’t there. And when it observes the non visual adaptations, the person is using, which are actually cognitive innovations, it flags them as disorganized or pathological, because they don’t fit the visual norm.
Alex: Well, it effectively leaves blind individuals trapped in this diagnostic limbo. They know their internal cognitive experience aligns deeply with the broader, neurodivergent spectrum. The sensory sensitivity is the executive function challenges, the different ways of focusing, but the very systems built to validate that kind of experience, are simply not designed to observe, understand, or fairly assess nonvisual neurology.
Storm: Exactly. They’re assessed against criteria they can’t meet and their actual adaptations are missed or pathologized.
Alex: Which is precisely why this reframing conversation is so critical. It basically sidesteps the exhausting, often futile need to acquire those external labels through biased systems, and instead, assert the inherent neurological truth of the situation.
Storm: Yes. The time for fighting for a secondary label, just to get the understanding and accommodations that should come with blindness itself feels like it’s over. The way forward, as Laura Millar suggests, really demands that we start with the foundational belief. Blindness belongs within the neurodivergent spectrum, period.
Alex: And accepting that premise is a total game changer for advocacy, isn’t it?
Storm: It absolutely is. It allows the blind community to tap into and align with the really powerful advocacy infrastructure and language already built by other neurodivergent movements.
Alex: What can we specifically learn, or maybe borrow and leverage from those communities?
Storm: Well, a huge area is leveraging their extensive work around understanding and advocating for diverse sensory processing profiles, and also, the strategies developed for executive function coaching and support tailored to nontypical brains. Neurodivergent advocacy, particularly from the autistic community, has been incredibly successful in demanding systemic adaptation, changing the environment, rather than forcing individual simulation or masking.
Alex: So applying that to blindness? What does that look like?
Storm: For the blind community, it means moving beyond just demanding basic access, like, say, a Braille sign on a door to demanding true neurological accommodation. For instance, recognizing that navigating solely by sound requires immense processing, and therefore demanding something like a sensory friendly, low noise workspace isn’t a preference, it’s a cognitive necessity.
Alex: Okay, so this shift fundamentally changes the nature of the accommodations we should be asking for. They stop being just simple access fixes, like large print or audio format.
Storm: Right.
Alex: And they become more complex, nuanced responses to inherent cognitive differences in processing attention and sensory experience.
Storm: Precisely. If blindness is widely recognized as neurodivergence, then the scope of accommodations naturally broadens to address those cognitive needs. For example, acknowledging the heightened cognitive load involved in non visual navigation means recognizing the genuine need for things like structured downtime during the workday, or maybe reduced complexity and concurrent tasks being assigned.
Alex: That makes sense. Less multitasking, more focused work.
Storm: Exactly. It means demanding sensory friendly environments becomes standard practice, not a special request. Think lower reverberation rooms in schools, readily available noise canceling headphones being an acceptable norm in open plan offices. Because when you rely primarily on auditory input, those noisy echo environments aren’t just annoying, they’re exponentially more cognitively taxing and can lead to burnout or shutdown.
Alex: And imagine the impact on things like individualized education programs, IEPs in schools, or even just standard workplace organizational protocols.
Storm: Huge potential impact. Instead of the IEP, just listing provided laptop with screen reader, it would need to acknowledge that a non visual learner might require explicit teaching in auditory spatial organizational strategies, or flexible deadlines because task initiation works differently, or benefit from specific training in non visual executive function techniques.
Alex: So it moves from providing a tool to supporting a different way of thinking and working.
Storm: Yes. The sources really emphasize that we must demand accommodations that reflect the innovative ways our brains actually process information, the ways they’ve adapted, not just accommodations that focus solely on the lack of visual input. It’s about honoring the neurological adaptations we’ve developed by requiring systems, educational, workplace, social, to adapt to them.
Alex: And beyond the practical policy and accommodations piece, there’s this really crucial element of identity and belonging that comes up. The feeling of alienation that Laura Millar touched upon, it sounds quite palpable in the sources.
Storm: It is. That experience of maybe feeling like an outsider in both the traditional blindness community, which sometimes focuses very heavily, maybe too narrowly on mobility, technology and basic access, and feeling like an outsider in the broader neurodivergent community, which often doesn’t readily recognize blindness as fitting under its umbrella, unless there’s that cooccurring diagnosis.
Alex: Yeah, that feeling of being on the edges of multiple communities is very common.
Storm: So, claiming blindness as neurodivergence seems to offer an immediate, really powerful sense of belonging.
Alex: Yeah. It provides a shared framework, a shared language for describing internal experience.
Storm: It absolutely does. It potentially liberates individuals from that exhausting, often invalidating quest to secure an external, possibly visually biased diagnostic label just to validate their own cognitive reality. It provides a banner, if you will, under which all the different complex ways, the blind brain organizes itself and experiences the world can be seen as part of a unified, legitimate neurological variation.
Alex: And this ties back so directly to core principles of disability justice, doesn’t it? Especially the principle of recognizing wholeness and intersectionality.
Storm: Beautifully. It acknowledges that a sensory condition like blindness isn’t separate from the resulting neurological changes. They are inherently intertwined. The entire experience is intersectional, sensory, and neurological. You can’t neatly pull them apart.
Alex: So the required shift in the conversation itself is changing how we talk about blindness?
Storm: Yeah.
Alex: That becomes maybe the most impactful advocacy move we can make right now.
Storm: I think so. We need to consciously stop operating from that deficit model, where the underlying question is always, okay, how do we compensate for what’s wrong with this person? How do we make them more like a sighted person?” And move decisively towards.
Alex: Towards the equity model, where the fundamental question becomes. How can society better support this person’s specific adapted neurology? How do we honor their unique cognitive landscape and ensure they have the resources environmental supports needed to thrive as they are?
Storm: And this reframing? It is just important to those individuals who strongly feel they fit existing neurodivergent labels like ADHD or autism. You’re arguing it’s necessary for the entire community.
Alex: Yes, because it recognizes that every individual whose brain has had to profoundly restructure itself due to the absence of sight, has undergone a significant neurological divergence. That divergence, regardless of whether it aligns neatly with other diagnostic categories, demands specific, cognitive equity, and understanding. And it naturally fosters solidarity with other neurodivergent groups who are fighting similar battles for recognition of neurological difference against a predominantly neurotypical world.
Storm: Exactly. It builds bridges based on shared experiences of cognitive difference and the need for societal adaptation.
Alex: Okay, so let’s try to synthesize this journey we’ve taken. We’ve covered a lot.
Storm: For personal experience, to neuroscience, to systemic critique.
Alex: We have. And I think the central takeaway, the core message remains both scientifically grounded and deeply focused on advocacy. Blindness is clear, documented evidence of profound neurological adaptation.
Storm: That’s neuroplasticity in action, resulting in a brain that is structurally and functionally distinct. It’s not just sensory loss. It’s neurological change.
Alex: Precisely. And therefore, it fundamentally deserves inclusion within the broader neurodivergent spectrum. This paradigm shift isn’t just semantics. It bridges the huge gaps left by the limitations of both the traditional medical model, and to some extent, the social model. It provides a pathway toward achieving true cognitive equity and a much deeper, more holistic understanding of the blind experience.
Storm: So for you listening, the hope is that you now have not just the validation of lived experience, but also the scientific language and the systemic critique necessary to advocate for needs that go far beyond just simple visual access. You have a stronger basis now to demand accommodations and understanding that address the underlying, necessary cognitive differences, the unique ways your brain might manage sensory processing, especially auditory, focus, memory retrieval, task initiation, and overall executive function.
Alex: And importantly, framing it this way makes it clear. This isn’t asking for special treatment or extra favors. It’s demanding that our systems educational workplace social be built, recognizing diverse innovative ways of being and processing information. It’s an equity demand.
Storm: Absolutely. And maybe here’s a provocative thought, something for you to take away and explore further, building on everything we’ve discussed. If hypothetically, blindness were universally acknowledged as a form of neurodivergence tomorrow. Just accepted fact. What is one specific nonvisual accommodation, something not related to print or physical spaces, directly related to managing focus, mitigating auditory processing or nonvisual task management? What’s one thing that would immediately move from being considered an extra resource, a special request? To being an immediate, recognized and utterly essential necessity. Something expected in every single workplace, every classroom, every public setting, just built into the foundation. What does that fundamental recognition look like, when it’s not just a patch or a nice to have, but part of the basic design?
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Full link to Podcast episode here:https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j36uj812fcsx71yqwbihe/BlindnessisNeurodivergenceWhytheSensoryOnlyLabelErases.m4a?rlkey=ple3d8ji6iwexyjhsa4b0r2rv&st=gvsbduvl&dl=0