It's striking, if not surprising, how relatable this talk is to me. My biggest difficulties are with contrast and brightness, and it's clear that dropping night driving will be the first major life change required by my degrading vision. Many-- maybe even most-- of the compensatory measures the speaker suggests for dealing with vision loss are already part of my life.
For me, these similarities and others feel very natural and very right, even a little comforting. My eye disease is genetic, with no treatments and no cure, and so part of what it has taught and reminded me is that bodies fail, and the terms of when and how they fail isn't up to us. One of the things I really like about this talk is how unsentimental it is (without being cold, either). Disability isn't a question of if but of when and how-- and that's not a tragic thing any more than the abstract fact of death, either-- it's just a part of nature, of life.
I like this talk because it reminds us that aging, injury, disability, and adapting to those things (individually and collectively) are common threads in human lives. They're something we should know to expect. We may not be fully in control, but we can prepare-- prepare ourselves, our families, our workplaces, our governments, our cities and towns and neighborhoods-- to accommodate the inevitability of various shades and varieties of disability in ourselves and the people around us. Embracing an awareness of the universality of disability can ground us even in the face of bodily changes that frighten and grieve us. We can know they're not the end of the world because they've always been part of the world around us.
This talk may be worth a watch even if you think it's not really about you. :)