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When Richard was nine years old, he began having trouble seeing the blackboard in school.

Tests showed that he had a condition known as “Birdshot Retinochoroidopathy.” His sister
has the same condition and like Richard, she hasn’t let it slow her down a bit. Today it can be cured if diagnosed and treated early enough. In the early 1960s, there was nothing that could be done.

Though the condition was incurable, Richard didn’t lose his sight all at once: it deteriorated slowly. By his middle teens, Richard’s vision was approximately 20/400. That means he had to be 20 feet away from something that a person with normal vision could have seen from
400 feet away. This is double what is generally considered the threshold for legal blindness.
Still, he didn’t completely lose the ability to see playing cards, at least to some degree. Even into his late 30s Richard could place a card a few inches or so from his eye and still discern face-up cards from face-down, picture cards from number cards, and could tell Aces apart from other cards because they looked like a “big white blur.” Today, his vision has reached the point where he can see virtually nothing, except the occasional light and shadow. He can no longer determine face-up cards from face-down cards by sight, though he can usually do it by touch.