Facts about Sight Loss and Definitions of Blindness

What Is Legally Blind?
How Many Blind or Visually Impaired People Are There?
Who Typically Becomes Blind?
Levels of Blindness
Braille Literacy Statistics

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.

Return to the top of this page.

How Many Blind or Visually Impaired People Are There?

Twenty-one percent 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.

Return to the top of this page.

Who Typically Becomes 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.

Return to the top of this page.

Levels of Blindness

Any loss of sight less than total blindness is usually referred to as a visual impairment (not a handicap). There is a wide spectrum of vision exhibited by people who are visually impaired. This can range from legal blindness through various levels of increasing sight loss to total blindness, the inability to perceive any light or movement.

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
• 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.

Return to the top of this page.

Braille Literacy Statistics

The definition of illiteracy is being unable to read or write in any language. Blind people who cannot read braille are considered as illiterate as sighted people who cannot read or write print. In order to succeed in life, people who are visually impaired must be able to communicate. Braille Institute has dedicated many of its resources to increasing braille literacy among the blind community. Here are some statistics about braille literacy*:

• Nearly 12 percent of 55,000 legally blind children in the United States can read braille. This literacy rate is down significantly from 50 percent in the 1960s.
• In 1968, out of 19,902 blind students enrolled in elementary and secondary education, 40 percent read braille, 45 percent read large type or regular print, and 4 percent read both. In January 1993, out of 50,204 blind students, fewer than 9 percent could read braille, 27 percent could read print, and 40 percent could not read at all. In other words, while there are 40,000 more blind children in school today, only 30 percent can read.
• Approximately 90 percent of blind jobholders in the United States are braille literate.
• Thirty-three states have enacted bills promoting braille instruction within K-12 school systems.

* Statistics courtesy American Foundation for the Blind and National Braille Press.

Return to the top of this page.