About Me

Servus!

I’m Stefan Lohmaier and I’m over 40 years old now. In my mid thirties I lost most of my vision and I’m almost blind now. This was due to bleeding and infections in my eye, while I had graft-versus-host-disease after a stem-cell-transplant. That was necessary because I had the cerebral form of Adrenoleukodystrophy. My daily life is different now. Work-wise, everything stayed stable. I still work full time as a Senior Software Engineer. My website mainly focuses on my blindness.

Visual Impairment

My visual impairment is hard to describe. I used the

Impairment Simulator Software by University of Cambridge

to show what I’m seeing.

On both eyes my field of view is tiny. That alone grants me blindness by law in Germany. In addition I have constant noise, like on old televisions. On the left eye my vision in the small field of view is about 20%-30%. On the right eye it’s less than 2%. For my vision the black parts of the simulation do not exist. They are not black. They are gone! That’s what’s the hardest to imagine for most people.

What does that mean in everyday life? My right eye is completely useless. It’s distorted and just some colors mushed together. On my left eye I can actually see a couple of letters depending on the light conditions. If it’s dark I only see black. If it’s bright I only see white. Every year what I see in the small spot gets worse due to new bleedings, which are taken care of by the eye clinic.

This of course affects my everyday life. I can’t really read at any reasonable speed. So I read using Braille or speech output. I can’t walk without bumping into things. That’s why I use a white cane. I will write some reviews about the help devices I have.