Marla Runyan Research Paper

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Marla Runyan: a Visually Impaired Athlete Marla Runyan is an Olympic athlete that once said, “If I break a national record, maybe they will stop writing about my eyes” (LaFontaine 228). Marla Runyan is blind; or to be more specific, she has Stargardt's disease.
There are 285 million people that are visually impaired in the world. Of those people, 248 million have low vision and thirty- nine million are blind (WHO). The causes of blindness fall into two categories: natural causes and environmental causes. Cataracts, the clouding of the eye’s normally cleared lens (Landau 20), glaucoma (16), and macular degeneration (22) could all be put into the category of natural causes. Equally important, the environment can also have a huge impact on the condition of the eyes. Exposure to chemicals (30) and punctures in the eye (29) can cause a person to go blind. Next, symptoms of blindness may include tilting the head to the side to better focus on an object, holding an object unusually close (24), blurred vision that glasses cannot fix, and double vision (27). Other symptoms of blindness could be eye pressure or …show more content…

She started specializing in high school high jump and still maintained a “spotless academic record” (Newsmakers). When she couldn’t see the board or had trouble taking notes, Marla would hire a student to take notes for her or she would just record the lesson and take notes later (Newsmakers). After experience, Marla’s disability does not affect her that much. She still has some peripheral vision and can see blurs. When she was a child, she had to quit most sports, but then picked up new ones like track because she didn’t have to see as many small objects. While she was in school, some people felt sorry for her and felt that she could not do things, but that only motivated her to do better because she wanted to prove them wrong. In some ways, being blind is a good thing; it can be

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