| General Statistics on Blindness |
| Complete, accurate statistics relating to sight loss often are difficult to obtain; there is no national registry specifically for blindness or visual impairment. The following have been gathered by Braille Institute from several sources: |
What is Legally Blind?
How many blind or visually impaired people are there?
Who typically goes blind?
Other Interesting Information.
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Image of what an eyechart looks like to a visually impaired person: |
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| What is Legally Blind? |
| Formally, a person is legally blind if their central vision acuity is 20/200 or less in the better eye, even with corrective lenses; or if they have central vision acuity of more than 20/200 if the peripheral field is restricted to a diameter of 20 degrees or less. Informally, those who, even with corrective lenses, cannot read the biggest letter on an eye chart are considered to be legally blind. |
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| How many blind or visually impaired people are there? |
21% of people age 65 and over report some form of vision impairment. This represents 7.3 million people.
In 2000, 1.7 million of 10.5 million California residents age 45 or older, and 755,000 of 3.5 million who are 65 or older, had a self-reported vision problem.
There are 15 million blind and visually impaired people in the United States, according to Research to Prevent Blindness. |
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| Who typically goes blind? |
Vision problems affect one in 20 (nearly 5 million) preschool-age children, ages 3-5, and 25 percent (12.1 million) of school-age children, ages 6-17.
Every 7 minutes a person in the United States loses their sight, often as part of the aging process. Seventy percent of severely visually impaired persons are age 65 or older. Fifty percent of that group are legally blind.
Because women generally live longer than men, visual impairment statistics are overrepresented in favor of women. |
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Other Interesting Information. |
In the United States blindness follows only cancer and AIDS as the biggest health fear by the public.
Legal blindness does not necessarily mean total blindness; 90 percent of people who are legally blind have some remaining vision.
Only one in three visually impaired people of employment age is in the workforce.
Just 2 percent of legally blind people use a guide dog; 35 percent use a white cane.
The leading causes of blindness are, in order, age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related cataracts.
Two leading causes of infant blindness are retinopathy of prematurity, a condition in which the retinas are damaged shortly after birth, and optic nerve hypoplasia, a malfunction of the optic nerve. |
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