Abstract
In a 2021 editorial entitled, “The importance of numbers: Who are you going to contact when you have questions,” Sandra Lewis highlighted a recurring reliance on the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) for blindness data, a tradition she inherited from her predecessor (Lewis, 2021). In what surely should be good news for researchers and others interested in these figures, AFB's Statistical Snapshots were updated in the spring of 2024, and the new release includes both updates to statistics that have been tracked for many years, as well as new information about poverty and digital access (American Foundation for the Blind, 2024).
Frequent readers of the literature of the blindness field will recognize that the start of many papers and dissertations take the form of, “According to the American Foundation for the Blind, there are X million people who are blind or have low vision.” Dr. Lewis also mentioned the 2018 estimate from national data, that approximately 32 million Americans report difficulty seeing, which is a staggeringly higher number than any professional in the field with boots on the ground might expect.
When my colleagues and I gathered information to update the Statistical Snapshots page, we found that the top-end number of visually impaired people in the United States soared to 50.18 million (National Center for Health Statistics, 2022). As Dr. Lewis correctly concluded in her editorial, this higher number can be attributed to how the questions are asked on the surveys from which these statistics are derived. The number of people who identify as “having difficulty seeing, even when wearing their eyeglasses” includes individuals who have clinical diagnoses of blindness or low vision, as well as people with much higher functioning vision, who qualitatively experience difficulty with some visual tasks.
Since many of these individuals cited in this statistic may not currently require or ever seek traditional vision services, practitioners may wonder: Why does AFB track not only those with vision-related disabilities, but also individuals who report difficulty seeing? The answer is nuanced.
Although educational and rehabilitative services play a pivotal role in shaping the future of U.S. society, by equipping visually impaired individuals with the skills they need to fully participate, advocacy efforts aimed at fostering accessible design can significantly enhance overall quality of life and community inclusivity from a systems approach. This advocacy work extends beyond physical spaces to encompass digital landscapes, reflecting a growing imperative in our increasingly digitized world.
What individuals learn from the experiences of people with blindness and low vision will benefit their access, to be sure, but it will also likely make the world more accessible for all of the people who experience just a little trouble seeing. When the web content a person is viewing can easily be made larger or bolder, when settings allow for reduced movement on screen, when the textual content of a website can be read aloud, the people who have to squint a little to perceive text, even when wearing their eyeglasses, and those whose eyes feel tired and sore by the end of the day will also have easier access to digital information. Thus, in terms of advocacy, the approximately 50 million individuals affected by visual challenges stand to reap the initial benefits of enhanced accessibility and they need to be counted.
Moreover, akin to the far-reaching ramifications of the “curb cut effect,” fostering an inclusive society has the potential to affect a much broader spectrum of individuals. Curb cuts, for example, certainly benefit wheelchair users; people with subtle mobility difficulty benefit from these changes in the built environment, as well; but so does anyone with a stroller, a bicycle, or a delivery cart. Thus, the curb cut effect is a common touchstone for the unforeseen benefits to nondisabled people that are discovered when society adds a design feature intended to include a segment of the disabled community.
Teachers, orientation and mobility specialists, and vision rehabilitation therapists often find themselves needing to raise awareness as part of their advocacy efforts. Sharing statistics on blindness and low vision can serve as a way to initiate conversations about accessibility, inclusivity, and the importance of accommodating all members of a community.
Spend some time exploring the revised Statistical Snapshots area of AFB’s website, which is available at AFB.org/stats, to access up-to-date information on blindness; low vision; deafblindness; employment rates; technology access; socioeconomic factors; and demographic breakdowns by race, gender, and age.
