According to World Health Organization statistics there are approximately 285 million people who are blind, have
severe low vision, or are near-blind. Of these, 39 million are blind, and 246 million have low vision problems. About
90% of these live in developing countries. The major causes are uncorrected refractive errors (42%), and cataracts
(38%). In the US, there are about 6 million people over the age of 65 who have age-related macular degeneration which is the leading cause of blindness. For each decade after age 40, it is found that there is a three-fold increase in the prevalence of blindness and low vision. This paper will address the question of what can we, as optical physicists and engineers, do? There is a need for efficient methods to detect problems, investigate function, provide solutions, and develop rehabilitation devices for the visually impaired. Here I will sketch out the magnitude and variety of the
problem, examples and future research directions.
|