I Am Stereoblind, But the 3DS Lets Me See the World as Others See It
I cried the first time I held a Nintendo 3DS. The experience was a revelation that I’ll not soon forget, and even if everyone stopped making games for it tomorrow, my blue 3DS XL is not going anywhere. That little machine is a window into a part of human experience that most people take for granted, but which is otherwise inaccessible to me.
124 Millimeters of Depth
I am mostly stereoblind. Stereoblindness is a blanket term for any condition that prevents a person from perceiving depth using binocular vision.
Depending on whom you ask, it affects somewhere between 3 and 15 percent of the world’s population, which creates an interesting demographic hurdle for the 3D television industry. Some people are stereoblind because their vision in one eye is severely impaired, others because their brains are unable to coalesce images from both eyes into a three-dimensional result.
I’m very slightly cross-eyed. Not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough that my lines of sight intersect about 10-12 inches in front of my face and continue in divergent directions.
Basically, I have double vision all the time.
Article by George Kokoris of Kotaku(dot)com. Visit his website to read more. 🙂