Sight impaired face higher living costs

People who are eligible for certification as severely sight impaired (SSI) can face 60% higher costs for everyday living than those who are fully sighted.

A study by sight loss charity the Thomas Pocklington Trust found ‘substantial extra costs people with sight loss are incurring’.

In a follow up study to the CRSP’s 2014 research on social policy at Loughborough University, the methods used by the Pocklington Trust to calculate Minimum Income Standards were applied to the budgets of living alone in two groups suffering different degrees of sight loss.

The ‘sight impaired’ (SI) category were shown to have up to 41% higher living costs than the sighted population.