Is Stevie Wonder Blind? How He Lost His Sight

Yes. Stevie Wonder is blind, and he has been since he was a newborn. He was born premature in Saginaw, Michigan, on May 13, 1950, and in his own words, "shortly after my birth, I became blind" (Variety, 2025, CNN). He has named the cause retrolental fibroplasia, the old name for retinopathy of prematurity, an eye disease of babies born early (CNN, 2010).

Below: how he lost his sight, what he has said about seeing, the eye-chip story of 1999, Motown and the Michigan School for the Blind, braille, and how he makes music without sight. He is one of the people in our list of famous blind people. Pages were checked on October 30, 2026. Where sources disagree, we say so.

Key points

• Blind since he was a baby. In his words, he became blind shortly after his premature birth, not at birth (CNN, 2010).
• Retinopathy of prematurity. Biography.com names it for his case; APH ties it to too much oxygen in his incubator (Biography, APH).
• On light, one short answer. Asked in 2010 whether he sees some light, he said "I may have" (CNN, 2010).
• Motown in 1961, school until 1969. A tutor taught him on tour, and he graduated from the Michigan School for the Blind (CNN, APH).
• He reads braille. At the 2016 Grammys he read the winner from a braille envelope (Library of Congress).

Stevie Wonder at a glance

Each row is sourced in the sections below.

How Stevie Wonder lost his sight

He was born Stevland Hardaway Judkins on May 13, 1950, in Saginaw, Michigan (CNN, APH Museum, 2023). Biography.com says he arrived six weeks early (Biography).

The American Printing House for the Blind (APH) tells it this way: he was put in an incubator, which gave warmth and oxygen. Doctors did not yet know that too much oxygen could damage a baby's eyes, and he "would be one of many thousands" blinded that way (APH). CNN is more careful: doctors believe he was accidentally given too much oxygen in his incubator (CNN).

His own account came on Larry King Live in 2010: "I was not born blind but shortly after that because of being premature." He named the condition as "the retrolental fibroplasia, that's what it's called," tied it to too much oxygen, and said many children born in the 1950s lost their sight the same way (CNN, 2010).

What retinopathy of prematurity is. Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is an eye disease of babies born early, in which abnormal blood vessels grow in the retina; in advanced cases the retina pulls away from the back of the eye, which can cause blindness (National Eye Institute). The institute lists too much oxygen therapy among the risks, and a 2016 medical review notes that the disease was called retrolental fibroplasia in the 1940s (National Eye Institute, review in PMC).

Biography.com names ROP for his case and says too much oxygen in the incubator "likely worsened the condition" (Biography). One older report differs: in 1999, CNN said he has retinitis pigmentosa (CNN, 1999). That doesn't match his own words or the other sources here, so this page follows what he has said.

Is Stevie Wonder completely blind?

He describes himself as blind. On July 9, 2025, at a show in Cardiff, Wales, he spoke about the old rumor that he can see. He mentioned "rumors about me seeing and all that," then said: "Truth is, shortly after my birth, I became blind" (Variety, 2025).

On light, the only answer we found in his words is a short one. Larry King asked, "Do you see some light?" He answered, "I may have," and went straight on to the name of his condition (CNN, 2010). He didn't say more, so we don't either. For the range of what blind people see, from some light to none, see what do blind people see.

On colors, he told Rolling Stone in 1973, "Well, I have an idea of what colors are." He said he links each color to what people have told him about it, and that "purple is a crazy color to me" (Rolling Stone, 1973). In 2010 he told King, "I think I've got a pretty good imagination," and said that if he ever saw a piano or a person, he thinks it would be close to what he imagines (CNN, 2010).

He has also said what blindness changed in how he sees people. "Being blind, you don't judge books by their covers," he said in 1973 (Rolling Stone). In Cardiff he called it a blessing that lets him "See people in the spirit of them, not how they look" (Variety, 2025).

The 1999 eye-chip story. In late 1999 he said he hoped to try an experimental retinal chip being tested at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins (CNN, 1999). Johns Hopkins was cautious: a spokesperson told Salon that "it is not likely to benefit him," though the institute offered to evaluate him (Salon, 1999). The sources we found don't say he ever had the operation.

Motown and the Michigan School for the Blind

His family moved to Detroit in the early 1950s (Rolling Stone, 1973). Sound came first. "Sound was very important to me," he told King, and an uncle gave him a chromatic harmonica one Christmas (CNN, 2010). Biography.com says he taught himself piano, harmonica and drums before he was 10 (Biography).

Motown. Ronnie White of the Miracles heard him and took him to Motown (Rolling Stone, 1973, APH Museum, 2023). Motown signed him in 1961 (CNN, APH Museum, 2023). CNN, citing his mother's authorized biography, says his surname was legally changed to Morris, "an old family name," when he signed, and that Berry Gordy gave him the stage name Wonder. That is why APH and Rolling Stone call him Stevland or Steveland Morris. He started out as Little Stevie Wonder (APH Museum). In 1963, "Fingertips, Part 2" and the album The 12 Year Old Genius both reached number one (CNN).

His age when Motown found him differs by source. He told King he was discovered at 9, signed by 10 and had his first record out at 11 (CNN, 2010). APH and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame say he was discovered at 12 (APH, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame), and Motown advertised him as a 12-year-old genius (Rolling Stone). The years agree: signed in 1961, a number one in 1963.

School on tour. He went to Fitzgerald Elementary in Detroit, a public school with a program for students with visual impairments, but touring kept him out of class (APH). Berry Gordy first hired a retired teacher from the Kentucky School for the Blind. When she found supervising a teenager on tour too much, the superintendent of the Michigan School for the Blind recommended Ted Hull, a graduate of the school who had just qualified as a teacher of the visually impaired (APH).

Hull met Stevie in 1963. Lessons fit between recording sessions, rehearsals and shows, sometimes in a hallway or a corner backstage. As Hull put it, "The world became his classroom." When he wasn't touring, Stevie attended the Michigan School for the Blind as an ordinary student (APH). The school is in Lansing, and he graduated in 1969 (APH Museum, 2023, APH). Hull told the story in his 2000 memoir, The Wonder Years (APH).

The school's stage piano, a 1925 Steinway baby grand he played often as a student in the 1960s, is now at the APH museum (APH Museum, 2023). For how these schools work, see schools for the blind.

Does Stevie Wonder read braille?

Yes. When Larry King asked him in 2010, he joked first: "What is that?" Then: "I'm kidding you. Of course I read Braille, yes." (CNN, 2010).

Braille was part of his schooling with Hull. APH lists what Hull needed to teach him: braille textbooks, a talking book phonograph, a tape recorder, a Perkins braille writer, a braille slate and stylus, braille paper and a cubarithm board, a tool for doing arithmetic in braille (APH). For six years, the APH museum says, the two of them traveled the world with their braille books and braillewriters (APH Museum, 2023). More on talking books for the blind.

Braille on stage. At the Grammy Awards on February 15, 2016, he presented an award from a golden envelope with the winner's name in braille and joked that no one else could read it. Then he turned serious: "we need to make everything accessible to every person with a disability." (Library of Congress, APH).

Braille music. The Library of Congress's National Library Service has his songs in braille music, including a collection from the 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life and a lead sheet of "Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing." Its music blog called him "a braille reading musician" (Library of Congress). None of the sources we found says whether he reads music in braille himself, so we don't say. How the code works is in braille music.

Reading print. The Kurzweil Reading Machine, introduced in 1976, scanned printed text and read it aloud with a speech synthesizer. The Lemelson-MIT Program at MIT says "One of the first users of the system was the musician Stevie Wonder" (Lemelson-MIT). For the other ways blind people read, from braille to audio, see how do blind people read.

How Stevie Wonder makes music without sight

By ear and by touch. He told King that as a child he was curious when he could "touch that thing, what's called a piano." Later, he said, "playing the harmonica after a while was like the saxophone to me" (CNN, 2010).

In 1973, Rolling Stone found him composing in hotel rooms on a clavinet wired to a synthesizer, two or three tunes a day, and on stage moving from drums to keyboards to harmonica (Rolling Stone, 1973).

Writing it down. King asked who writes down the notes. Wonder explained that with MIDI, what he plays on a keyboard can be turned into "the writing of each note that you play," by a machine or by computer software (CNN, 2010).

New instruments. In the early 1980s he gave the inventor Ray Kurzweil the idea of bridging acoustic and electronic instruments. Kurzweil set up a music company with Wonder as musical advisor, and in 1983 it made the K250, a synthesizer that reproduced the sound of a grand piano (Lemelson-MIT).

What blindness gave his music. He told The New York Times in 1975, as Biography.com quotes it, that blindness let him "use my imagination to go places" (Biography). In 2010 he put it this way: "we really feel before we see. We really hear before we see." He added that it is "definitely more difficult for someone who has seen and then lost their sight" (CNN, 2010).

Speaking up for blind readers

CNN lists him as a UN Messenger of Peace from December 2009, and says that on September 20, 2010 he spoke at the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) about copyright laws and access to audiobooks for visually impaired people (CNN).

In June 2013, countries meeting at WIPO in Marrakesh, Morocco, adopted the Marrakesh Treaty, which lets accessible copies of published works be made for people who are blind or otherwise print disabled. He called it a step toward works "such as braille, large print text and audio books," and said, "The thirst and famine for books is coming to an end." (WIPO, 2013). At the UN in December 2016 he asked more countries to join it. "I beat the odds," he said (WIPO, 2016).

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.

Nothing here means Stevie Wonder uses or endorses Braillito. If his story makes you want to learn braille yourself, the cells are where it starts. The translator on braillito.com shows how a word or short phrase looks in UEB, but it only applies the rules a program can apply, so it doesn't replace a transcriber. 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

Is Stevie Wonder completely blind?

He describes himself as blind, and says he became blind shortly after his birth (Variety, 2025). Asked in 2010 whether he sees some light, he said only "I may have" (CNN, 2010). No source we found says more about how much light he perceives.

How did Stevie Wonder go blind?

He was born premature in 1950 and became blind shortly after, from what he calls retrolental fibroplasia, today known as retinopathy of prematurity. APH says too much oxygen in his incubator damaged his eyes, and CNN says doctors believe so (CNN, 2010, APH, CNN).

Was Stevie Wonder born blind?

Not quite, in his own words: "I was not born blind but shortly after that because of being premature" (CNN, 2010). Many profiles say he was born blind, among them Rolling Stone in 1973, but he places it just after his birth.

Does Stevie Wonder read braille?

Yes. "Of course I read Braille, yes," he told Larry King in 2010. As a boy he studied with braille textbooks and a braille writer (CNN, 2010, APH). Others who read braille are in famous blind people.