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What is the difference between Vision Impairment and Blindness?
One way of looking at it is...if corrective lenses cannot provide 20/40 sight in at least one eye, you may be visually impaired.
And keep in mind that those who are legally blind--who test 20/200 or less in the better eye after the best correction, or have a field defect in which the widest diameter of the visual field is no greater that 20 degrees--are also visually impaired.
We like to think that being visually impaired means you are "A Little Bit Blind." And chances are you may be more sighted than not.
Consider that the leading cause of vision impairment and legal blindness is macular degeneration which, alone, will NEVER cause complete vision loss. Most cases of diabetic retinopathy do not produce total blindness, although the disease is the leading cause of profound vision loss among young working adults in the United States. Glaucoma, the second leading cause of vision loss in the world, when successfully treated, does not lead to total blindness. Retinitis pigmentosa, in the majority of cases, allows for some residual vision.
While reliable statistics are hard to come by, it is now estimated that in the United States 26,000,000 people are afflicted with some visual disorder. Of these, approximately 1,300,000 are considered blind. Of those only 10% (130,000) have no useable vision or only the ability to perceive light. Therefore, approximately 1,000,000 are called “legally blind”–those who have useable vision. NAVH does not consider anyone blind who falls into this category.
Copyright National Association for Visually Handicapped (NAVH) |
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