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. Legal blindness occurs when a person has a central visual acuity (vision that allows a person to see right in front of them) of 20/200 or less in their best eye with correction. With a visual acuity of 20/200, a person can see at 20 feet what a person with a vision of 20/20 sees at 200 feet. If you have any questions about your own visual acuity, or if it`s been a long time since you`ve seen an ophthalmologist to determine your vision, contact us. We are happy to assess your vision with a series of painless tests and discuss your concerns. You can talk to the doctor about how you see now and the options available to help you get your best vision possible! American printing house for the blind. What is legal blindness? You measure your eyesight by wearing glasses or contact lenses. Their vision could fall below 20/200 without them. If it improves when you put on your glasses or contact lenses, you are not considered blind under the law. For more information about the many types of read options available, see Read, Write, and Vision Loss on the VisionAware Web site. Being legally blind affects your eyesight, but that doesn`t have to stop you from living a fulfilling life.
Note that the blind person within the meaning of the law is not completely blind. While legally blind people can still technically see, completely blind people will not be able to perceive light or see anything. 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. But what does it mean to have poor eyesight? Is it just that your vision is blurry or unclear? Legally, it must be caused by eye disease and reduce your visual acuity to at least 20/70. This means that to see what most people can see from 70 feet away, you need to be as close as 20 feet. In other words, you can hardly read the 3rd row from the top of Snellen`s eyeboard (or the chart you read at the ophthalmologist with all the letters). Blind people are “legally blind,” but some people who can see with strong eyeglasses say they are legally blind without their glasses. This means that without glasses, they might not see well enough to see certain things, drive, etc. Visual acuity below 20/200 is considered blind under the law, but to truly fit the definition, the person must not be able to achieve 20/200 vision, even with prescription glasses. Many people who would be legally blind without glasses can function well in everyday life with proper glasses or contact lenses. Finally, even if both eyes could see 20/20 with correction, would LASIK be a good idea? I don`t think so.
Most reputable and experienced ophthalmologists will not do LASIK above about -8 because there will be so much thinning of the cornea, late stability problems are a definite potential problem. These can be serious. A hit-and-run ophthalmologist could go ahead and do it, knowing that they will be gone long before this problem occurs. A LASIK clinic may not care, because if the problem arises as long as they are paid: they will blame the surgeon and ophthalmologist and pretend to be just the place for the doctor`s office. Even if they tell him what to do! Booking provider. Eye trauma or injury and genetic diseases, such as Usher syndrome, can also lead to legal blindness. Part 1 of the U.S. definition of legal blindness says this about visual acuity: Most surveys and studies show that the majority of people living with vision loss in the United States 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. “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. It`s not a functional definition of low vision and doesn`t tell us much about what a person can and can`t see. There are many conditions that can cause legal blindness, but the most common are age-related eye diseases. Age-related eye diseases that are the main causes of low vision and blindness include: Under the new criteria, if a person`s visual acuity is measured using one of the new charts and they cannot read any of the letters in line 20/100, they are considered legally blind based on a visual acuity of 20/200 or less. For example, if the person`s best corrected visual acuity for better eye removal was set at 20/160 using an ETDRS chart, they would now be classified as legally blind. Regardless of the type of test table used, the person will not be considered blind within the meaning of the law if he or she can read at least one letter on the 20/100 line. For example, if a person`s best corrected visual acuity for distance in the better eye were determined using an ETDRS table of 20/125+1, they would not be considered legally blind because they could read a letter on the 20/100 line. SSA does not use the results of visual field screening tests such as confrontation tests, tangent screening tests, or automated static screening tests to determine legal blindness. For more information on definitions of statutory blindness, see Assessment of Disability in Social Security, a publication of the Social Security Administration.