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SOCIAL ASPECTS OF VISUAL DISABILITY *
Author(s) -
Silver Janet
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
ophthalmic and physiological optics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.147
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1475-1313
pISSN - 0275-5408
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-1313.1983.tb00625.x
Subject(s) - blindness , earnings , psychology , visual impairment , optometry , work (physics) , carry (investment) , medicine , psychiatry , business , finance , engineering , mechanical engineering
Over 40 million people are estimated to be limited in the work they can do by a visual disability, most of them in the Third World. Much preventable blindness goes unchecked and even reversible blindness is untreated in countries where aphakic spectacles may cost the equivalent of a year's earnings. In the United Kingdom and other advanced countries the problems are very different. Visual disability is 100 times more likely to occur in a person over 75 than in a child. The disabled carry heavy penalties, social, financial and psychological. Society, when it is aware, tends to “look after” the disabled person, rather than provide him with the means to look after himself, but services are inadequate to meet demands.