Prevent Blindness reported 1,729,883 Ohioans lost their vision last year, revealing its social and economic toll.
The organization’s report said Ohioans spent approximately $1.6 billion on vision problems, refractive errors, visual impairment and blindness in all age groups.
“With the growing number of Ohio adults affected by vision problems, the localized data available in ‘2020 Vision Problems in Ohio’ will be helpful to health care and social services providers, members of the aging network and policy makers in planning future strategy and resource allocation to curb the growth of vision loss now and in the future,” Sherry Williams, president and CEO of the Ohio Affiliate of Prevent Blindness, said.
A challenge for the visually impaired population is using the internet – specifically, websites that aren’t accessible for the community, such as not organizing content with headings or not enabling manual font size adjustments.
The report showed that 97,870 people 50 and older have age-related macular degeneration, a 10.5% increase; 1,025,422 people age 40 and older have cataracts, a 3.4% increase; 294,742 people age 40 and older have diabetic retinopathy, a 3.5% increase; and 109,556 people age 40 and older have glaucoma, a 3.5% increase.
“Approximately 12 million people 40 years and over in the United States have vision impairment, including 1 million who are blind, 3 million who have vision impairment after correction and 8 million who have vision impairment due to uncorrected refractive error,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
