Blindness Simulation: What Research Says, What to Do Instead

A blindness simulation puts a sighted person under a blindfold or blurring goggles for a short time, often to build empathy. Peer-reviewed studies found that it rarely improves attitudes, and in some experiments it made people judge blind people as less capable. Organizations of blind people are critical too, but not all of them rule it out: the National Federation of the Blind lists conditions under which it can work, and RNIB uses simulation spectacles in its training for care staff.

Below: what four studies found, what the NFB and RNIB say, how to run a simulation more safely, and four activities that teach more. Sources checked on November 1, 2026.

Key points

• A 2015 study found a backfire. After a blindfold simulation, students rated blind people as less able to work and live independently (Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2015).
• Most studies find little or no gain. A 2007 review of 41 studies did not find simulation an effective way to change attitudes (ERIC).
• A simulation that teaches a method did better in a small 2018 study on physical impairments (PubMed).
• The NFB's conditions: teach a real technique, say it is not blindness, and include blind people (Braille Monitor).
• Activities that teach more: a few braille letters, a screen reader, sighted guide technique, and listening to blind people.

Blindness simulation at a glance

What a blindness simulation is

A blindness simulation asks a sighted person to cover or blur their eyes for a while and then do ordinary things. Two tools are common:

• Blindfolds or sleepshades, which block all sight.
• Simulator goggles, sometimes called simulation spectacles, which blur the view or block part of it to imitate a kind of low vision.

The tasks are everyday ones. In the 2015 study described below, college students spent about 30 minutes blindfolded pouring water from a pitcher into a glass, sorting coins and walking a route around a university building, as the lead author describes it in the NFB's Journal of Blindness Innovation and Research. Schools run simulations on awareness days, employers in staff training, and some charities at fundraising events.

Blind students who train under learning shades are a different case: that is training blind people, not teaching sighted people about blindness (see the last question below). This guide is about the second use.

What the research found

The 2015 blindfold experiments

The 2015 study is "Stumbling in Their Shoes" by Silverman, Gwinn and Van Boven, in Social Psychological and Personality Science (2015; it went online in November 2014). Its abstract says "such experience simulations can backfire" (the article).

In two experiments, students who did a challenging blindness simulation then "judged blind people as less capable of work and independent living". The comparison groups simulated a different impairment, no impairment, or only watched someone else do the blindfold tasks. The blindfolded students also predicted that they themselves would adapt to blindness more slowly.

The detail organizers tend to miss is the comparison with watching. The students who only watched a peer struggle did not rate blind people as low. The authors' explanation: a simulation highlights the first challenges of becoming disabled, and people then judge blind people from those first minutes. Our guide for sighted people learning braille makes the same point from a learner's side.

The 2007 review

A meta-analysis in Remedial and Special Education (2007) examined 41 studies of disability simulations. The authors concluded that the data did not show simulation to be an effective practice, though "few negative effects were noted" (ERIC). So in 2007 the picture was mostly no effect; the 2015 experiments added that a blindfold can make things worse.

The 2017 study with a low vision simulation

In Rehabilitation Psychology (2017), Nario-Redmond, Gospodinov and Cobb ran two experiments with college students. The second, with 50 students, included a low vision simulation along with hearing and dyslexia simulations (PubMed).

The simulations made participants feel "more confused, embarrassed, helpless". Their warmth toward disabled people went up, but "attitudes about interacting did not improve". The authors' conclusion: simulating disabilities "promotes distress and fails to improve attitudes".

A study that found a benefit

One study points the other way. A 2018 pilot study in Disability and Rehabilitation, published online in 2017 and also led by Silverman, tried a different design (PubMed). It was about physical impairments, not blindness. Thirty-two occupational and physical therapy students took part. Some learned to do simple tasks while simulating paraplegia or hemiplegia; the others watched videos of people doing those tasks.

The students who learned the methods rated the lives of people with those impairments more positively afterward. The video group did not change. The authors' condition is the useful part: simulations "must include guided exposure to effective methods" for daily tasks. It was small and about physical impairments, so it does not prove blindfold activities work, but it shows what separates a useful simulation from a harmful one.

What organizations of blind people say

The National Federation of the Blind

The NFB, an organization of blind people in the US, has published on simulation several times. Its writers are critical, but they don't rule it out.

• The concern. In the Braille Monitor (June 2017), Silverman writes that simulations are "highly controversial among disability activists, including members of the NFB". Without instruction, she says, a simulation "may intensify people's preexisting fears and misconceptions". She ends with "reason to advise caution" (Braille Monitor, June 2017).
• Watch blind people instead. NFB President Mark Riccobono writes that understanding blindness is "better communicated through observation than personal experience". Ask a newly blindfolded person to travel the streets, he writes, and "her predominant emotion will be fear". He is also critical of simulations tied to fundraising and of dining in the dark without first learning how to serve yourself and cut your food (Braille Monitor, April 2017).
• When it can work. Riccobono still answers yes to simulations that give sighted people a taste of how blind people do daily tasks, if organizers make clear "they are not experiencing blindness". His examples: identifying coins by touch and by the sound a dropped coin makes, using a cane to find a wall on a route with no steps, measuring with a click rule, and pouring liquids without spilling. All of it "must be supported by meaningful dialogue with blind people".
• The research view. In the NFB's journal, Silverman argues that blindness simulation helps only if it "includes hands-on training in the skills of blindness" and "involves meaningful contact with blind people" (Journal of Blindness Innovation and Research, 2015).

RNIB

RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People), a UK charity, uses simulation in its professional courses. Its training for health and social care staff lists "practical experiential learning activities, with simulation spectacles" (RNIB). That is simulation inside a course on supporting people with sight loss, not a stand-alone awareness exercise.

Blind people speaking for themselves

Haben Girma, the deafblind advocate, has said no to a blindfold exercise at an event. Her answer is covered in what blind people actually see, along with how much sight most blind people have.

If you still plan a simulation

These conditions come from the sources above. If you can't meet most of them, pick an activity from the next section.

1. Teach a technique, not a shock. One task, one method blind people really use, taught before anyone covers their eyes. Riccobono says the tasks "should not be threatening": no streets, and his cane example has no steps.
2. Say what it is not. People are trying a technique for a few minutes. They are not finding out what blindness is like.
3. Have blind people in the room. A blind presenter shows the technique and answers questions. Without that contact, the fumbling is what people remember.
4. Leave fundraising out. Riccobono writes that simulations paired with fundraising play on a sense of loss, because scaring people raises money.
5. Be careful with goggles. In the NFB journal article, Silverman says low vision goggles "could give an exaggerated impression of the hardships" of partial vision loss.
6. Never make a blind classmate the demonstration. The braille games and activities guide explains why in its section on what not to do.

For parents of a blind baby, the same article says it is "virtually impossible" for a sighted adult to simulate never having had sight. Watching blind adults do everyday tasks helps more.

Activities that teach more

The NFB journal article suggests three alternatives for a classroom: demonstrating assistive technology, inviting blind guest speakers, and basic braille exercises. Four activities built on those ideas:

1. Read and write a few braille letters

• Hand out a braille alphabet chart. Each person finds the letters of their initials and writes them as dots on paper.
• Partners swap papers and read each other's initials, first by sight, then by touch.

The braille games and activities guide has fifteen more ideas for a class. For adults who want to keep going, see how to learn braille.

2. Try a screen reader

A screen reader reads the screen aloud and lets you control a phone or computer by gestures or keys. iPhones and Android phones have one built in.

• iPhone: VoiceOver has a practice area where you can "safely try out VoiceOver gestures" without changing anything (Apple).
• Android: TalkBack, Google's screen reader, gives "eyes-free control of your device" (Google).
• Windows: NVDA is a free screen reader from NV Access (NV Access).

Before anyone turns one on, show them how to turn off VoiceOver or TalkBack, because the phone answers to different gestures while it is on. Screen readers for the blind explains how they work, and a blind user showing how they use one is the best ending.

3. Learn sighted guide technique

Sighted guide is a way to walk with a blind person who wants a guide, and here the guide is the one learning the skill. RNIB's guiding page, its booklet How to Guide People with Sight Loss and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services describe it in similar terms:

• Ask first. Introduce yourself, and "ask them how they like to be guided". RNIB adds that there are "many reasons why someone may decline your help".
• Offer your arm. The person holds your arm at the elbow and walks "half a pace behind you", so they feel your turns. Wisconsin's guide says at least a half step behind.
• Narrow spaces. Move your guiding arm behind your back; they step in behind you and you walk in single file.
• Steps, kerbs and slopes. Say that they are coming and whether they go up or down.
• Seats. Describe the chair and let them find it from your arm. RNIB says to guide people into a seat, not back them into it.
• Leaving. "Don't walk away without saying you are leaving."

Practice in pairs, taking turns as the guide. The skills blind people use to travel on their own, such as the white cane, are taught by an orientation and mobility specialist.

4. Listen to blind people

• Invite a blind speaker. Many organizations of blind people have local chapters; ask whether a member would speak to your group. Let them choose the topic, and collect questions ahead of time.
• Watch blind creators. If no speaker is available, try videos by blind creators. Tommy Edison and Molly Burke are two places to start.
• With a blind student in the class, ask them and their family first; they may want to share, or not. The guide for teachers of a blind student and the teacher of the visually impaired are better places to plan from than a simulation.

Where Braillito fits

Braillito, our app, teaches braille. It teaches the braille cells in lessons with exercises you play, with lives, levels and a daily streak: 59 lessons in 8 worlds in English. It also has a translator, a dictionary and a cell builder. The English lessons are uncontracted braille (grade 1); they don't teach contracted braille or transcription, and Braillito isn't a braille transcriber.

If you are a teacher, trainer or parent, braille is one of the skills an article in the NFB's journal suggests in place of a blindfold, because it is something blind people really use. A one-hour activity only needs an alphabet chart; the app is for a student, a colleague or a parent who wants to keep learning after it. Without paying, the braille translator works in any browser.

Braillito is a subscription with no free version; depending on the plan, it starts with a free trial or a discounted first period, if it's your first subscription (is Braillito free?). Get Braillito.

Frequently asked questions

Are blindness simulations a good idea?

Usually not as a way to change attitudes. A 2007 review of 41 studies found no reliable benefit, and 2015 experiments in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that a blindfold simulation made students judge blind people as less capable. The NFB's president writes that a simulation can work when it teaches a real technique and includes blind people.

What can I do instead of a blindfold activity?

Teach a few braille letters, try a phone's built-in screen reader, learn sighted guide technique from RNIB's booklet, or invite a blind speaker. An article in the NFB's journal suggests braille, assistive technology and blind speakers, and each of these teaches something blind people actually do.

Do simulation goggles show what blind people see?

No. Most blind people have some sight, and it varies a lot (what blind people actually see). Goggles show one guess at one kind of low vision, without the skills a person with that vision uses. An article in the NFB's journal warns they can exaggerate the hardships.

Do blind people ever train under blindfolds?

Yes, in some training programs. The NFB encourages blind students to do some or most of their training under learning shades, so they build skills that don't depend on any remaining sight. That is training for blind people, which is different from a short simulation for sighted people.