I'm presuming the blind were blind-from-birth. Indeed, the blind can develop 'facial vision' in every day life just as nocturnal animals do. Whereas we build the environment through light they construct an 'image' of the environment through other means (such as electricity or ultrasound). It's interesting though.

blindness due to a cortical lesion cannot be used as evidence to highlight supposed supernatural vision during NDEs.There are rare cases where the visual cortex is damaged and the person cannot see, yet some modalities of visual information still get through. Like this case : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/4090155.stm (I disagree with calling it a "sixth sense", BTW).

There is no reason in principle why a cortical lesion with apparent complete blindness should preclude some sort of visual input - the basic sensory transducers are still intact. Photons are still entering the eye, impinging on the retina and causing biochemical changes in the rods and cones that may induce electrochemical phenomena in the optic nerves, which are potentially transmissible right back to the visual cortex. Note that this sort of mysterious "sight" occurs when fully conscious and not during an NDE.

Hence even if you found an NDE with visual experience in a person with cortical blindness of some sort, I would be inclined to put it down to subconscious visual processing that comes to the fore during the NDE. I would not find that incredible, or even implausible - the person could "actually" receive visual input all along, but denied it up till then. Nothing supernatural about that.

In simple terms, sightedness during NDEs in people with cortical blindness doesn't prove anything.

On the contrary, if the eyes themselves are damaged very badly (as in severe retinal neovascularisation, like in the case I cited), or, better still, there's been complete enucleation of both eyes at birth, THEN any accurate visual experience during an NDE would certainly be supernatural. Because there is no physically plausible way photons from the surrounding could induce electrical activity in such a person's brain during life.