Low vision: Access all areas

As an optometrist or optician, your responsibilities to your patients begin and end with preventing or ameliorating loss of vision, right? In the first part of this article, I have chosen to highlight just a few of the assistive technology advances that have allowed visually impaired people to make huge strides towards independent living.

Actually, I do not believe they do. For a large number of people in the UK, sight loss will become a fact of life. Do you not, as an eye care professional, also have a responsibility to this group of patients? Should you not be able to advise them on other ways of ‘seeing’ that can help them to maintain independent, fulfilled lives connected to their communities? It is not all about optical magnification – there is so much more now in the 21st century.