Report Summary

Detailed Findings

 Detailed Findings
 

 Vision Impairment
 

Overall

The ABS reports 316,200 in Australia have total vision loss or partial vision loss that remains uncorrected.[1]  A total of 115,900 are under the age of 65 and 200,300 are aged 65 years or over.  Upon consultation with the ABS, it has been determined that those with total or partial uncorrected sight loss who suffer a profound, severe or moderate core activity restriction would effectively have a print disability.  Therefore, a total of 193,300 Australians suffer a print disability due to sight impairment.  This figure represents just over 1% of the population.

 Table 5: Sight Restriction by Disability Status

	No sight loss/sight corrected ‘000	Partial loss of sight/Total loss of Sight ‘000	Total ‘000
0 – 64 years
Core Activity Restriction
Profound	198.3	19.8	218.1
Severe	422.1	14.6	436.6
Moderate	419.3	14.5	433.8
Mild	601.6	30.6	632.1
Schooling or employment restriction	1,585.9	74.4	1,660.4
All with specific restrictions (c)	1,956.0	92.7	2,048.7
Total	2,269.2	115.9	2,385.1
65 years and over
Core Activity Restriction
Profound	229.5	90.1	319.6
Severe	129.7	31.9	161.6
Moderate	204.0	22.4	226.4
Mild	354.0	45.6	399.6
Schooling or employment restriction	-	-	-
All with specific restrictions (c)	917.3	190.0	1,107.2
Total	1,025.0	200.3	1,225.2
Total
Core Activity Restriction
Profound	427.8	109.9*	537.7
Severe	551.8	46.5*	598.2
Moderate	623.3	36.9*	660.3
Mild	955.7	76.2	1,031.8
Schooling or employment restriction	1,585.9	74.4	1,660.4
All with specific restrictions (c)	2,873.3	282.7	3,155.9
Total	3,294.1	316.2	3,610.3

* Totaled = 193,300

State Profile

 The ABS statistics quoted above did not contain statistics disaggregated by State and Territory.

Vision Impairment Type

The Centre for Eye Research Australia conducted research with Australians over the age of forty to determine causes of sight loss. A total of 5,147 respondents were consulted and the results extrapolated to the entire Australian population.  The figures below display the particular types of vision impairment suffered for two differing levels of vision impairment. Figure 1 displays the causes of vision impairment amongst those with less than driving vision.  Figure 2 shows the same results for those with legal blindness.

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

The survey covers only those aged over forty and despite vision related associations confirming that the above figures are representative of their memberships, the figures should not be extrapolated to a wider population (ie , 193,300 with a print disability in Australia) as membership lists are not representative of the entire vision impaired community.

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This page was last modified on Tuesday, 27 September, 2005