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What Is Low Vision?
Low vision Is when your sight is 20/70 or worse and means that if you use contact lenses or glasses your low vision will not be fully corrected.
To have low vision is different than being completely blind.
A low vision person has some useful sight unlike a blind person who has no sight at all, meaning 0% vision remaining.
But being low vision much better than blindness, we must say that unfortunately low vision usually interferes as well with the performance of someone in his/her daily activities, such as reading, cooking, playing sports or driving. A person with low vision may not recognize images at a distance or be able to differentiate colors of similar tones.
Low vision can occur at any stage in life, but affects the elderly more than in any other age. However, low vision is not a natural part of aging.
Studies shows that most people experience some kind of changes with age (presbyopia) and problems like finding it difficult to read without glasses and things like that, these changes HOWEVER usually do not to low vision.
Most people develop low vision because of eye diseases. Common eye diseases, include Retinitis Pigmentosa, Macular Degeneration, Glaucoma, and Diabetic Retinopathy.
When vision impairment is recognized early, treatment can be more effective, enabling people to maintain as much independence as possible for as long as possible.
Someone is legally blind when the best corrected central acuity is less than 20/200 (perfect visual is 20/20) in your better eye, or your side vision is narrowed to 20 degrees or less in your better eye.
People who are legally blind may still have a bit of useful vision, just like people who have low vision.
Legally blind, you may qualify for certain government benefitsin the United States especially and have no benefit whatsoever in other countries.
The latest statistics estimated that approximately 17% of people over the age of 65 are either blind or have low vision.
It is very important to act very fast once you know you have low vision, you need to contact your eye doctor and ask about what you can do to have the best possible life you can, remember there are many things you can do to improve your life if you have low vision, here we will tell you many!
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