How Being Blinded in an Accident Made Brian Charlson’s Life Better

Brian Charlson, who was blinded at age 11, typed on a Braille keyboard in his office at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton.

John Tlumacki/Globe Staff Brian Charlson, who was blinded at age 11, typed on a Braille keyboard in his office at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton.

Brian Charlson’s life changed forever on an afternoon long ago when he was alone in his family’s kitchen. Like many 11-year-old boys, he enjoyed experimenting with stuff. So he poured baking soda and vinegar into a glass bottle, screwed on the cap, and was ready to throw it into the blueberry bushes outside when it exploded in his face, glass flying everywhere. He woke up in the hospital with bandaged eyes. “I had now entered the world as a blind person,” Charlson says. He didn’t lose all of his vision at once, but medical complications took the rest of his sight by the time he was 21.

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