Reading Text
Have you (1) .......... worn spectacles? If so, you will (2) .......... appreciate how fundamentally one's quality of life could be diminished without access to the corrective options now available.
The oldest surviving depiction of eyeglasses is a 1351 portrait of a Cardinal, though it is believed that, around 1000 AD, we saw the (3) .......... of a rudimentary device consisting of a spherical magnifying glass used to enlarge written text. An Italian craftsman was later (4) .......... with producing the first wearable spectacles, in 1284. How, then, did those with impaired vision manage before that point?
(5) .......... vision is extraordinarily prevalent among humans and almost certainly always has been. Until relatively recently, however, corrective lenses would have been financially inaccessible to the majority of people. The hunter or soldier, dependent on acute sight for survival, would have been (6) .......... affected by such an impairment. Where literacy was not universally valued, visual acuity for physical survival most certainly was. This (7) .......... the question of the true scale of uncorrected vision problems in the developing world even today.
The next time we open our eyes with ease, perhaps we ought not to take the privilege of clear sight entirely for (8) .......... .