World health organization says that there is 150 mil. heavily visually impaired people including 38 mil. blind people in the world. Thanks to increase in life expectancy and higher incidence of eye diseases in older people, these numbers grow every year. In Europe suffers from eye problems every 60th person. There are about 150 - 200 thousand of these people in the Czech republic. Majority of adults wears dioptrical glasses, however we talk about serious visual impairment only in case the glasses are not able to correct the eye problems completely.
It is usually not complete darkness; it is impaired vision or inability to see. It is not possible to feel how the blind people feel; healthy person has his perception of the world, can imagine colours and is capable of orientation, and can imagine untouchable things.
Amblyopia is an irreversible reduction of vision in the better eye in the range of 0.4 to 0.5 of normal vision. Amblyopic person is able to see only 0.5 to 0.05 as sharply as healthy person.
Amblyopic person is a person, whose sharpness in the better eye is lower than 0.5 or has field of vision reduced to less than 10 degrees in both eyes, so called pipe vision.
Complete blindness = person, who doesn´t have light sense, cannot differentiate between light and darkness.
Loss of central vision = jerky eye movements, troubles with adapting to light and darkness, troubles with colour perception.
Visually impaired people are usually divided into following groups:
Eyes of these people are damaged to such an extent that they lose their vision. This causes that sight of these people is undeveloped or completely lost. As a result such affected people are unable to create visualisations. These people don´t have light sense, don´t differentiate between light and darkness, don´t perceive colours and don´t have central vision. Blind people are handicapped in moving themselves and in space orientation. These people require special treatment to develop touch and hearing perception, to learn how to read and write Braille and to develop orientation abilities.
Eyes of these people are damaged to such an extent that they have only remains of sight. This causes deformation of all visual abilities, serious limitation to correct visualisations and decrease of orientation ability.
Amblyopia is an irreversible reduction of vision in the better eye in the range of 0.4 to 0.5 of normal vision. Amblyopic person is able to see only 0.5 to 0.05 as sharply as healthy person. Amblyopic person usually has field of vision reduced to less than 10 degrees in both eyes, so called pipe vision. This visual impairment means partial limitation of visual abilities and distorted vision of the world around.
Blind and visually impaired people face many obstacles in social life as well as on the labour market. Blind people have difficulties making contacts with other people; it is hard for them to speak to passers-by and to make contact at work or other places. Main problem is that they don´t know whether they speak to man or woman and what the age of this person is. Since their space orientation is limited, they are not able to accurately estimate distance of the person, what direction he/she faces and how many people are present in the room. These are some obstacles that the blind people have to face. So it is necessary for the general public to approach the blind people in a way so that they can overcome these obstacles more easily.
When entering the labour market blind people face the following biggest obstacles: insufficient qualification, insufficient language skill and insufficient verbal and non-verbal skills.
Cataract (easiest treatment) is a blurred eye lens; visual resolution is reduced; after operation, the patient is able to see like before.
Glaucoma is caused by intraocular pressure, when the eye nerve is not supplied; if not treated, can cause complete loss of vision; decreased field of vision, optical nerve caved in - patient has reduced field of vision followed by pipe vision; not painful.
Tapetoretinal degeneration leads to impaired vision already in younger age - troubles with adaptation to light and darkness, problems with night blindness, changes in field of vision, leads to pipe vision - night blindness.
Diabetic retinopathy - disease of retinae, common for all diabetics - reduced visual resolution, patient sees dimly, but is not blind.
Macular degeneration is age-dependant - in older people causes loss of central vision, patient has peripheral vision, but doesn´t see actual objects.
Frequently results in combination of eye diseases. With the exception of younger people, patients mostly suffer from multiple handicaps.
Czech Blind United, Krakovská 21, 110 00 PRAHA 1, tel.: +420 221 462 146, fax: +420 221 462 145, e-mail: sons@sons.cz, tel.: +420-777 214 097
PROJECT TYFLOEMPLOYABILITY IS CO-FINANCED BY
EUROPEAN SOCIAL FUND AND BY STATE BUDGET OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC.
