I was introduced to stereoblindness in Oliver Sack’s book The Mind’s Eye where he gives a detailed account of “Stereo Sue” in her self-titled chapter that shares her story, that of his own, and others. This disorder according to “medical-dictionary” can be summarized as:

“Complete lack of perception of stereopsis. It may result from blindness in one eye or strabismus, but also from some unknown cause in people with otherwise normal vision in both eyes. Stereo-blindness in some parts of the visual field also occurs in people who have had their corpus callosum or optic chiasma cut or destroyed. However, some depth perception may still exist thanks to monocular cues (e.g. aerial perspective, light and shadow, overlap, relative size).”

After reading Sack’s book I am confident that I do not have this disorder but I was perplexed by Sue’s experience when I learned she had no idea that she suffered from this disorder until she reached her college years. Like Sacks, Sue pursued a career in Neuroscience, and without her education would never have known her perception of the world differed from that of the majority. Fortunately, with eye therapy, Sue was able to gain stereopsis, essentially the ability to perceive depth perception, eventually. Today, there seems to be more research being conducted on the topic, you can even take a free test online, yet I fear the awareness of this disorder is not as well-known as it should be. Maybe this is because people seem to function fully in our world with this ailment, ignorantly unaware of its existence like Sue was? I wonder what they are missing, but I also wonder what it is like to see the world through the eyes of someone who is Stereoblind?