I have now gone 19 days with double vision. There was one day in there where my vision was double for only an hour or so, but the rest of the days, I’ve been lucky to have a solid hour of time when my eyes are really functioning normally.

Double vision makes it much harder for me to pass as not disabled, so the question of whether and how to disclose my disability has been more pressing the last few weeks. I mentioned last week that I added a disclosure to my email signature. This week I wondered whether I should disclose to a group of 23 colleagues who participated in a two-day workshop I facilitated.

The decision of whether or not to disclose to a group of people is never a simple one. I’ve mentioned before Annika Konrad’s concept of access fatigue, which is the exhaustion disabled people experience from having to constantly educate others about their disabilities and needs, enable others to feel helpful even when they are doing the very barest minimum to make something accessible and/or doing it very grouchily, and balance the costs of asking for access with the benefits of actually getting it. I hear often hear people disparage folks who disclose as “making excuses” or “looking for attention.” Even though I know I am not doing those things, it weighs on me that I will likely be seen as doing those things by some people.

I have gotten into the habit of disclosing my disabilities to my students on the first day of class. When I did that for the first time years ago, I received an outpouring of positive support and gratitude from my students. Many of them told me that seeing an authority figure disclose a disability helped them feel more welcomed and included in the class. Some of those students had disabilities themselves, but many didn’t and simply felt that having a professor who was open about being disabled created a culture of acceptance. In all the years I’ve been disclosing to my classes, I’ve never had any negative reactions, so for me, it’s a no brainer to disclose to students. I’ve had similar positive responses in the Writing Center I direct from the staff. In both these cases, though, I have a lot of privilege: in the classroom, I’m a tenured professor. In the Writing Center, I’m the boss.

My position is different with colleagues. We are peers in a sector in which being overworked and burned out or close to it is almost valorized. If it looks like I am making excuses and doing less work than they are, they could see me as someone who isn’t pulling their weight and therefore creating more work for them. Before the workshop, I had communicated by email with the participants several times, so they had all seen my email disclosure, although I don’t know how many people actually read my signature or remembered it by the time the workshop began on Monday. I decided not to make any additional announcements about my impaired vision, but several times on Monday and Tuesday morning, I found myself awkwardly trying to pass for someone with unimpaired vision. Then I did a presentation on Tuesday around midday, and that’s when I very much regretted trying to pass.

I got to a part of my presentation where I had planned to read a dense paragraph of text. It simply wasn’t possible—the words and letters swam before my eyes and nothing would come into focus. I said to the audience, “I’m sorry, I’m experiencing double vision that is making it impossible to read this,” and a participant immediately said, “I’ll read it” and did so.

I got no sense of any negative judgment from anyone about this incident, but I wish I had not apologized for my double vision. It is very important to me to not apologize for my disability because it is not mine to apologize for. I prefer to thank people for helping me rather than apologize. I also prefer to disclose in ways that frame disability as normal, and I’m not sure that the way I handled the situation did that, although I do really like that my colleague jumping in to help positioned accommodating on the fly as normal.

Although I’m not happy with how I handled this situation, I’m not sure what I would do differently if I could have a do-over. Maybe simply deleting the “I’m sorry” from what I said, since that’s the part that bothers me. I’m not sorry for having a vision impairment. Or perhaps I could have asked at the outset of my presentation for a volunteer to read the text when I got to that part of the presentation.

Ideally, I’d like to have a default way of handling this type of situation with colleagues so I don’t have to think about it whenever it happens. My default with students and the Writing Center staff is to disclose explicitly and immediately, which eliminates the need for me to make a decision about when and how to disclose. I want that same simplicity with colleagues.

One aspect of my vision impairment that makes it difficult to explain to others is that there isn’t one neat and tidy condition or issue that I have. “Low vision” is a generic term for a variety of conditions that result in impaired vision that can’t be corrected with glasses or surgery. My low vision is caused by a combination of conditions that probably could be corrected with glasses or surgery if they were my only condition, but the combination causes complications.

Here’s what I have been diagnosed with, in order of most common to least common:

1. Nearsightedness. Lots of people have this and it is typically corrected with glasses. With glasses, I can get a 20/40 correction.
2. Astigmatism. This is another condition many people have and it can typically be corrected with glasses. Mine is severe enough that I can’t get a perfect correction.
3. Dry eyes. Another common condition. I use prescription eye drops twice a day and non-prescription eye drops throughout the day, but still, my eyes feel scratchy most of the time.
4. Presbyopia. Difficulty seeing things close up. This is a common condition that causes folks my age and older to need reading glasses.
5. Nuclear sclerosis. This is a form of cataract that many people my age and older get. It’s not bad enough yet to warrant surgery. It makes everything look a little cloudy to me.
6. Photophobia. Sensitivity to bright light. Can be mitigated with sunglasses and a hat with a brim, but because of my low contrast sensitivity (see #8), I am even more dangerous with sunglasses than without.
7. Hypertropia. This means my eyes don’t focus in the same spot. It is somewhat corrected by prisms in my glasses, but the correction isn’t perfect, and when I’m tired or I’ve been reading or writing a lot, my hypertropia gets worse, which leads to double-vision.
8. Low contrast sensitivity. This is the condition I usually mention when people ask me about my low vision because it’s the one that’s not common and fairly easy to explain. The “not common” piece is important because if I say I have nearsightedness or astigmatism, people dismiss my claim to be visually impaired immediately because so many people have those conditions. The low contrast sensitivity is what makes it hard for me to distinguish between things that are similar colors, such as sidewalks, streets, and people in dark clothing. To me, it all looks like a weird grayish blob that goes on and on. There is no correction, but good lighting and being well-rested helps—but I have to be careful that my good lighting isn’t too bright, because then my photophobia kicks in and it can stress out my eyes and make the auto-immune condition (see #9) worse. It’s the low-contrast sensitivity that makes it dangerous for me to drive (I haven’t driven in several years).
9. An auto-immune condition that makes my eyeballs swell up and change shape enough that the prisms in my glasses that correct the hypertropia are no longer able to correct it, resulting in double-vision. The swelling is also uncomfortable and sometimes painful. There is no fancy name for my auto-immune condition—it just seems that my body sometimes acts like it’s allergic to my eyeballs. I don’t seem to have any other symptoms.

I also have halos around the edges of my vision (undiagnosed so far). On top of all this, I have another condition that isn’t actually a vision impairment but it seems like one: I have prosopagnosia, also knows as face blindness. I see faces just fine, but I can’t remember them—even my own face or my daughter’s face don’t stay in my memory. I recognize people by their gait, voice, glasses, clothing, or hair.

The combination of vision conditions, especially the last three, is what, in my case, constitutes low vision. Any one or two of those conditions alone might be just a “normal” vision problem, but the combination of hypertropia that gets worse when I or my eyes are tired, low-contrast sensitivity, and the auto-immune condition push me firmly into low vision territory.

I am more likely to experience double vision when I’m tired or I’ve been reading or writing a lot. I typically experience it several times a week in the evening, after a reading- and writing-heavy day, but at the end of the semester or when I’ve really been reading and writing intensely, I can have double vision that lasts for a few days. Right now, I am on day 11 of having double-vision. By experimenting, I’ve found that I can get about three hours a day of reading and writing in if I take breaks every 20 minutes. During my breaks, I do some eye exercises, use eye drops, and sometimes put a hot compress on my eyes. After about 15 minutes of a break, I try to read or write again; sometimes my eyes tell me they are good to go and sometimes they tell me to keep on breaking.

During the times when I can’t read or write, I can sometimes get some work done using voice dictation in words and the accessibility tools on my phone, but because I don’t use those tools regularly, I’m not very efficient with them yet.

I’ve also learned that my vision goes double from looking at someone during dinner, attending Zoom meetings, and watching TV, so it’s not just reading and writing that tire them out.

Over time, I’ll get more fluent with the voice dictation and accessibility tools. For now, I have added this note to my email signature:

PLEASE NOTE: Due to vision issues, I am relying on voice dictation and am unable to thoroughly edit or proofread right now. Please read with generosity. Thank you.

It’s important to me that I’m not asking for forgiveness or apologizing for my vision.

The complexity of my low vision is why it frustrates me when the retina specialist I go to (because with all my conditions, I’m at high risk of a detached retina) says, “Well, in a few years when your cataracts are worse, I’ll do surgery and restore your vision.” No, buddy, you won’t restore my vision. You’ll remove my cataracts and maybe reduce my nearsightedness, but I’ll still have seven vision conditions—and oh, yeah, there’s a possibility that your amazing surgery will kick my auto-immune condition into high gear.

Or when someone tells me I should try acupuncture, or a B12 supplement, or yoga, or whatever. Or when they suggest that I’m using my low vision as an excuse for get out of doing something. I’ve had to work really hard to eek out a few hours of work every day for the past 11 days. It doesn’t feel to me like I’m getting out of anything.

Like a lot of folks with disabilities, I just want people to believe me when I say I have a complicated vision situation and then move on.