List of people with visual disabilities

Table of contents

1 Blind from birth 2 People who became blind later in life 3 People blind in one eye 4 Fictional and Mythological Characters

Blind from birth

• David Blunkett - British cabinet minister.
• Clarence Carter
• Jose Feliciano, (born 1945)
• Errol Garner
• Thomas Gore
• Al Hibbler
• Homer - said to have been blind, not known to have been blind from birth
• Blind Lemon Jefferson - Blues musician & singer
• Blind Willie McTell, (1901-1959)
• Ronnie Milsap
• Gilbert Montagné
• George Shearing
• Alec Templeton

• Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-1977) was a blind jazz saxophonist, perhaps best known for his ability to play more than one saxophone at once.
• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), became blind in later life.
• Jorge Luis Borges, became blind in old age from a hereditary condition
• Louis Braille, (1809-1852), became blind after an accident caused an eye infection at the age of 3.
• Andrea Bocelli - barely sighted at birth became completely blind at 12.
• Ray Charles, (1930-2004), blind from glaucoma since age 7.
• Sammy Davis Jr, (1925-1990), lost his left eye in an car accident in 1954
• Frederick Delius, (1862-1934), became blind later in life after contracting syphilis
• W.C. Handy, (1873-1958), Blues composer, went blind in middle age
• Helen Keller, (1880-1968), blindness resulted from fever at age 19 months
• Esmond Knight - British actor
• Stalebread Lacombe - Jazz musician, went blind in middle age
• Fritz Lang, (1890-1976), nearly blind at the end of his life
• Jim McMahon - legally blind in one eye due to a pencil accident as a child
• John Milton, (1608-1674), became blind at the age of 42 (I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night).
• Claude Monet, (1840-1926), lost sight through cataracts in later life.
• William Prescott, historian, from childhood blind in one eye, severe visual impairment in other eye
• Joaquin Rodrigo, composer - from an illness at age three
• John Stanley, composer, became partially blind as the result of a domestic accident at age 2
• James Thurber - lost an eye as a child when his brother shot him with an arrow and as an adult lost the sight in the other eye.
• Sue Townsend - registered blind in mid 2001 due to a diabetic condition she has suffered from for 20 years.
• Doc Watson - folk guitarist, blinded by a childhood eye infection at the age of one.
• Stevie Wonder - blindness from retrolental fibroplasia caused by high oxygen concentrations in the incubator in which he was placed because of his premature birth.

• Tex Avery, (1908-1980), blind in his left eye
• Elizabeth Blackwell
• Bohemund IV of Antioch, the One-Eyed
• Gordon Brown - lost an eye as a boy during a game of rugby.
• Bushwick Bill - American rapper, member of the Geto Boys, lost an eye during an argument with a girlfriend
• Dale Chihuly
• Ry Cooder - blind in one eye
• Sammy Davis, Jr
• Moshe Dayan
• Ben Dreyfuss
• Sandy Duncan - lost vision in one eye following surgery.
• Peter Falk, (born 1927), lost his right eye at age three as a result of a tumor.
• Nick Griffin
• Hannibal
• Rex Harrison, (1908-1990), blind in one eye as the result of a childhood illness.
• Eric Hosking
• Samuel Johnson
• Horatio Nelson, (1758-1805), lost an eye in battle and later took advantage of his disability.
• Claude Rains - blind in one eye
• Richard Shaw
• Cordwainer Smith (pen name of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger) - blinded in left eye as a child, vision impaired in right eye by infection
• Art Tatum
• James Grover Thurber
• Rich Williams

• G'Kar (Babylon 5) (blind in one eye)
• Odin (Norse mythology) (gave up one eye in exchange for wisdom)
• Tiresias, the Blind Seer (Greek mythology)