Light waves get converted into neural signals by your eyes.
Those visual representations are just neurons firing in your brain.
It’s just a matter of quantization/information density.
Our digital systems have to quantize information into floating point representation.
Whereas biological systems don’t. Though there is some form of quantization, as the cells in your eyes can only sense specific wavelengths.
Different thinking animals have different sensory organs.
You don’t need the same sensory systems to be conscious.
Or at least it’s proving that some of your requirements for them conflate with what you actually believe is capable of thought, sentience, or consciousness.