The World is blind.
 

According to WHO, almost 285 million people suffer of visual impairment, including blindness and low vision 39 million to 246 million. This report is an investigation of the everyday life of people with visual impairment in the only structure in Italy dedicated to learning the necessary domestic and urban autonomy.
In Italy there were different structures used to accommodate young people and adults with visual impairment, whose purpose was to teach them full autonomy in their lives.
Today, after the closing of all facilities, in Italy Paolo Colosimo Institute of Naples is the only still active where people converge from every region of the country. 
The need to address this structure takes guests to live part of the day in public areas, turning them into a big sui generis family. This is how ties and moments of sharing grow.

The evolution of these dynamics leads them to an original condition of forced companionship inside the Institute, to a different relationship out of the building, in the real life made of comrades, friends, and lovers.

I decided to start this report in the end of 2014, driven by the need to investigate and inform me about the daily life of those who are suffering from visual impairment, being me too almost blind due to a degenerative disease to my corneas. Look for the extraordinary in the ordinary through images of real life, in order to demolish those preconceptions and prejudices about the limitations faced by the protagonists of this story. 
My first question to them was:
"How do you live everyday yours life in this discomfort way? 
And they told me: "The world is blind, not us!"

text and photos © Claudio Menna