An estimated 1.1 million Americans are legally blind. Certain conditions, such as glaucoma, cataracts, diabetes, and macular degeneration, can affect your vision to the point where you can be diagnosed with the disease. People often ask about the difference between being blind and being “legally blind.” Because “blindness” can mean many different things, blindness under the law is the threshold at which a person is considered visually impaired for legal purposes, such as insurance purposes, to receive certain benefits, or to be accepted into various programs. Most surveys and studies show that the majority of people living in the United States with vision loss are adults who are not completely blind; Instead, they have what`s called poor eyesight. You may have heard the terms “partial vision” or “partial blindness” or even “poor eyesight,” which are also used to describe low vision. However, these descriptions are no longer commonly used. According to the American Foundation for the Blind, legally blind is not the same as completely blind, which is used to describe the inability to see anything with both eyes. Most people who are legally blind have some eyesight. Update: In 2007, the Social Security Administration updated the criteria for measuring legal blindness when using new vision test diagrams with lines that can measure visual acuity between 20/100 and 20/200. Under the new criteria, if visual acuity is measured using one of the new tables and cannot read any of the letters in line 20/100, a person is considered legally blind, based on a visual acuity of 20/200 or less.
Visual acuity of 20/20 is considered “perfect vision” because no help is needed to see better, and the average person with good vision can clearly see what doctors have determined to be 20/20 vision. Some people (especially young people with good eyes) may see letters smaller than the overall size “20/20”. Just because you can`t see more than one or two feet in front of you with your natural vision doesn`t mean you`re legally blind. If you can use glasses or contact lenses to correct your vision above 20/200, you are not eligible to be marked as blind under the law. Being legally blind affects your eyesight, but that doesn`t have to stop you from living a fulfilling life. The reason some people use this term is because there are many different types of “blindness.” People mistakenly believe that all blind people see only darkness or literally nothing at all. In fact, blindness may involve seeing colors or light, or having greater visual acuity in some parts of their field of vision, while others are blurred or absent. If you learn that you are legally blind, organizations like the American Foundation for the Blind can help. They have programs to help you cope with the physical and emotional effects of vision loss. About 80% of blind people have residual vision. It can be difficult to understand how a person with a particular eye condition can see some things while not seeing others.
While some people lose a lot of vision in a short time, others slowly lose vision. Many diseases that cause blindness begin to affect a certain part of vision and then progress to remove more vision. For example, macular degeneration initially affects a person`s central vision (the vision that makes us see straight ahead). Visual examples of what individuals might see if they have diseases such as macular degeneration, glaucoma, cataracts, diabetic retinopathy, and retinitis pigmentosa can be found on the National Eye Institute`s website at www.nei.nih.gov. It varies from person to person. You may be able to see objects from a distance, but your peripheral vision could be compromised like tunnel vision. You may have good peripheral vision, but have difficulty seeing objects in the distance. In some states, being classified as legally blind may affect your ability to obtain a driver`s license. Talk to your doctor about your concerns.
You cannot diagnose yourself with the condition. Your doctor needs to make this call, so let him or her know if you have any eye problems. “Legal blindness” is a definition used by the U.S. government to determine eligibility for job training, rehabilitation, education, disability benefits, equipment for the visually impaired, and tax exemption programs.