Are there any totally blind people with Asperger's syndrome?

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I'm not, but wonder if this is common or even possible.

denny

There were a few autistic kids I went to school with that were either totally blind or legally blind.

My wife is blind and went to a state school for the blind. She tells me that there was a high percentage of classmates with multiple handicaps, including autism.

so you're saying i don't have to worry at all about becoming blind because I have Asperger's? Great! I've always wanted to stare directly into the sun.
-Okay seriously, I really don't see (no pun intended) why people with Autism aren't any less likely to be blind than NT people. And of course most people in general aren't totally blind, they can see a tiny little bit.

Yeah, blind folks do tend to have repetitive movements, and sometimes that can make it harder to tell whether they're stimming or whether it's just blindisms. And they're already part of a minority group, so their social distance from others is going to already be there even if blindness is the only thing that's different about them.

I'd expect autism to be a bit more common among people with visual impairments than people without, because of how different disabilities tend to occur together--like if you had prenatal trauma, difficult pregnancy, genetic defects, you might end up with blindness and autism together, related to the same cause, probably with other issues on top of that. Haven't seen any stats on it, but wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.

Of course they can occur together just by chance. Even if there aren't any prenatal/genetic glitches that raise the risk of both autism and visual impairment, one in a hundred people with visual impairment would also be autistic.

http://rudelyinterrupted.com/about-the-band

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1819.2007.01608.x/full

This study found that 30 out of 257 blind children, or 11% of them, were on the autism spectrum. Estimates of autism prevalence in the general population are usually around 1-3%. So it seems that autism is more common among blind children than would be expected.

I am totally blind. I wasn't officially diagnosed until I was about 24 years old. I am 30 now, and will be 31 this year. It's really frustrating for me, being diagnosed later in life. I think a lot of the issues I have were blamed on "blindisms" and I was often accused of not trying. Now, I am relieved to be officially diagnosed. Most of the people I know who are on the spectrum happen to be visually impaired, which I find interesting.

Yes there are, as I am one of them. Why wouldn't there be? Interesting question however, as I find it difficult to find much about blindness/visual impairment and Asperger's Syndrome. I wasn't diagnosed as aspie until I was 24, and have been totally blind most of my life.

I use a screen reader which reads to me what is on the screen. It's a free screen reader called NVDA, which stands for Non-visual Desktop Access. It also tells me what I'm typing, though I've basically memorized the keyboard.