I imagine a blind person can study light just as well as anyone else, and can learn about the eye and can understand that sighted people are able to detect both

I imagine a blind person can study light just as well as anyone else, and can learn about the eye and can understand that sighted people are able to detect both wavelength and intensity differences. Just like a deaf person could learn about pressure waves in the air and how they can be detected by functional ears. But it's probably difficult or impossible to understand what the perception is like, and how rich it is, except by analogy when thinking about how they'd try to describe the senses the do have to someone that doesn't have them. Our understanding of echolocation in bats or the magnetic field in birds is probably similar. We understand what they detect and how they detect it. But I don't think we have any understanding of what it's like to experience that perception.