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Can blindness and synaesthesia go together? Of course my first answer would be: "Of course they can and if not, then I'm simply the first blind synaesthete." But in this article I'll try to give some information on the co-existence of the two conditions.

There's probably no doubt about the fact that blindness can co-occur with for instance sound-smell or touch-taste synaesthesia. Sight is not involved in these synaesthesiae, so why shouldn't they be able to co-occur? More research is going on about the co-occurrence of blindness and synaesthesiae involving sight.

Some researchers believe that blindness has a causal relation with acquired synaesthesia - meaning that blindness may trigger synaesthetic perceptions. It's thought that a progressive eye condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa may have a relation with acquired synaesthesia (ie. synaesthesia occurring later in life). There, to me, seems to be some logic behind it, if you see it as "phantom vision" - the eyes may be damaged, but the part of the brain that handles visual stimuli, still works.

There are also congenital synaesthetes who later become blind or whose vision decreases. I for example already had a severe vision impairment when I was born, but had good colour perception until I was around 12. Now I have only a little colour perception, but my synaesthesia never disappeared. I've heard of one man going totally blind at age 12 from a degenerative eye disease, but never lost his synaesthesia.

Indeed I'm not sure how synaesthesia and blindness are related. There are various theories and there's no certainty yet - as there's not even certainty of what causes synaesthesia. It's at least true that the two conditions CAN co-occur.