How to Handle Blind Characters?

I was wondering how everyone handles blindness effect on characters. On a table top RL game even if you're blind as the character, you as the player still see the battle map and the minis and don't have to remember where everything was the moment you became blind. Taking away the sight of a player however... This makes it so the player has to take actions ENTIRELY by MEMORY of where things were before they became blind. It doesn't seem viable to just take away "Has Sight" from a player's character token. So how do you handle blindness on a VTT?

It seems pretty accurate to me, as a player/GM, but I also am a big fan of "If the character doesn't know it, the player doesn't know it either" type play ;) You might replace their previous vision with 5 feet of dim light, reflecting the sort of spacial-awareness imparted by feeling/flailing around with the hands.  You might just put an eyes or similar status icon on the token to remind the player the character is blind.

I also handle this the way GenKitty suggests. It's less frustrating than complete blackness, allowing the player some basic mobility and keeping the game fun.

The only issue I'm having with the suggested method (maybe I'm not doing it right?) is the fact the blind character in question is surrounded by party members with lights.

There isn't a perfect solution.  If you knew you were going to be running this ahead of time, you could set up a second copy of the room with no lights and pop their token in there with limited vision, but that starts to get a bit onerous... though you could probably write a script to deal with it... hmmm...

For me, I am all about the players having fun.  So if I am going to use blind as a condition against the players, the condition itself is already not much fun, so I am not about to go ahead and remove their ability to see the table top.  As far as I am concerned, blindness as a condition is not total loss of sight, just loss of effective sight.  Things are still visible, just blurry, and your eyes hurt, and everything is too bright or too dim, and in general you've got big trouble, such as that -5 or -10 penalty to hit, but you are a hero, you'll push through!!

I'm much the same as Aranador, although I'm blessed with dedicated players. I leave everything as it is and expect the blinded character to not metagame. That way their keen heroic mind can likely remember the rough layout of the room, the last known locations of friends and foes and at least be able to make an experienced guess about their best course of action... to their credit they usually overact to the point of making deliberate strategic errors on account of their blindness but then someone usually cures the condition in short enough time that having a more complex solution becomes more effort than it is worth :) Your game, your rules though... if it was a face to face game there is always fun to be had blindfolding a blinded character's player however...

I have and never had any intention of taking the player's character sight away. I just illustrated it as a possible action some DMs may take for handling blindness on a VTT. I'm of the same vein as @Aranador & @Ziechael - fun trumps all. So I guess I will trust my players to not meta-game. I have a good group of players so I don't have to worry much. I was just wondering how others handed it and wanted to know what the best method was.

That's the beauty of the being a DM, the best method is always your  method... and woe betide anyone who dares question it ;)

I'm in the same camp as the last two posts. When you're playing together at a table and one character is blinded, that player still hears all the disciussion of relative positions of other characters, and can see the miniatures if used. No one would say to that player, "Your character is blind so we are putting a blindfold on you." (Though I just noticed ziechael mentioned that as a fun thing to do - maybe once in a while, hehe.) In roll20, the visual table is a huge part of the experience, and it creates more confusion to inflict a black map on the player. It actively excludes  that player from a big part of the experience of play, and they do feel they are missing out.  It is different when dealing with, say, sight deficiencies that affect the whole group - like when you are exploring a new area, or there's an invisible monster in the area. That's a shared experience for the group, and is something roll20 facilitates very well. But you have to be careful with individual effects. It interrupts to flow of play. Suddenly you have to deal with that player being confused about whats going on, in a way that doesnt happen in tabletop play, and other players spending more time getting bogged down in minutia. Watch how the players talk to each other and do their actions, when one or more players have sight restrictions like this. I think most groups will experience some unnecessary confusion and frustration during these scenes. So for me, it just doesnt add anything to the experience for me, and actively interferes with it. One final thing I'd say: I think a lot of people try to incorporate everything roll20 has to offer, because its there, without thinking how it'll make the game more complicated. Just because a tool exists and is available, doesn't mean you have to use it.