Low Vision

Low vision is a term commonly used eye care professionals to mean partial sight or sight that isn’t fully corrected even with regular glasses, contact lenses, medicine or surgery. Low vision includes moderate vision impairment, such as tunnel vision or blind spots. It also includes legal blindness and almost total blindness.

Low vision has a variety of causes including eye injury, diseases and heredity. Sometimes low vision involves a lack of acuity, meaning that objects appear blurred. Other times, it involves a reduced ability to distinguish colors, see contrasts or determine spatial relationships among objects.

The eyesight of a person with low vision may be hazy from cataracts, blurred or partially obscured in the central visual zone because of macular degeneration or distorted and/or blurred from diabetic retinopathy. Also, people with glaucoma or retinitis pigmentosa can lose their peripheral vision and have difficulty seeing at night.