VISUAL DISABILITY

Visual Disability and its practical implications

Visual Disability and its practical implications

Introduction

Despite the implications of laws, regarding the improvement of life style, disabled people get still deprived of their essential care, need and face many challenges in their daily lives. Millions of people of United States suffer from various kinds of disabilities. These include hearing loss, visual impairment, learning or cognitive disability also a mobility impairment.

There are two categories of visual impairments; low vision (having little or blur sight) and blindness (no vision at all). Around 15% of the people, who have low vision, get transformed into total blindness. For a legitimate vision disparity, 20/200 or worse in the better eye with correction glasses get required.

Etiologic

The visual disability has its roots from ancient history. Various medications and experiments have been done for surmounts. According to the research, Optic nerve atrophy due to perinatal hypoxia is the most common reason for the cause of visual impairment. Almost 22% of the visual disabled people suffer from this impairment. Retinopathies of prematurely and congenital abnormalities of the eye globe are the secondary reasons for visual disability and almost 17% and 15% people respectively suffer from these. Anisometropia and strabismus are also considered as the main cause for uniocular low vision.

The prevalence of blindness varies depending on the social, medical and economic conditions of the country. For example, the blindness disability is low in America (0.2%) rather then Somalia (6%) or Tanzania (5%). These countries lack the facility to effective provisions of medications. The ratio of blindness among children is 0.03% in developing countries and 0.01% in developed countries. A study stated that 50% of children with congenital visual impairments also have additional disabilities. Age related blindness is high among the adults. Approximately 3.5% of the adults (high age) have high chances of having visual disability, depending on their medical conditions (American Foundation for the Blind, 2001).

Regardless of the age of onset of a visual impairment, the cause of the visual impairment, or the association of additional health complications, a visual impairment will have an impact on family life.

Medical management

The causes for visual disability cannot be cured but, medical and surgical treatments may reduce the severity and progression. For patients with far critical condition, the required optical non-optical electronic prescriptions get done. Further to these, trainings, therapies and instructions gets designed for them to improve the efficiency at some or the other level.

The care process

The care process for the visual disability involves the foremost diagnosis of the ailment. Within that diagnose, it is important to know to detailed history of patients health, family history, visual difficulties, visual and ocular history and comprehensive health history. This is then followed by an ocular examination which involves measurement of visual activity, refraction analysis, Ocular Motility and Binocular Vision Assessment, Visual Field Assessment and Ocular Health Assessment.

Management of Visual Impairment

The treatment extent and training for the visual disability depends upon the conditions of prevailing disability. Vision impairments are of many types (Reduced Visual Acuity, Central Visual Field Defects, Peripheral ...