Last Thursday was World Sight Day.
This guest blog is by SeeAbility’s eye care champion team, Lance Campbell, Joanne Kennedy, Rebecca Lunness, Grace McGill.
We are eye care champions.
We are four people with learning disabilities, autism or sight loss.
Everyone with a learning disability needs good eye care.
People with learning disabilities are ten times more likely to have eye problems than other people.
This includes:
• People with Down’s Syndrome
• People with more severe learning disabilities
Half of children in special schools have a sight problem.
No one is ‘too disabled’ for a sight test.
Regular sight tests help people to keep their eyes healthy.
There are a lot of adjustments that can be made.
There is lots of information and advice on eye care including easy read, on the SeeAbility website.
But sometimes people miss out.
People think you might have to speak or read to have a sight test, when you don’t.
Some people don’t get enough support with their appointments or reasonable adjustments.
Not enough areas have local sight testing schemes in place with opticians.
Some good news.
We are working together with Learning Disability England to change things.
For World Sight Day we are supporting a petition to government.
Will you sign it too?
It calls on government to:
- Make sure NHS England keeps rolling out sight testing in all special schools as it said it would
- Make sure there is a specialist sight testing service for people with learning disabilities, wherever they live
Just because someone has learning disability doesn’t mean their sight isn’t as important as anyone else’s.
Everyone has an Equal Right to Sight!
Special Needs Jungle also published a blog for World Sight Day.
It is called ‘Is NHS England breaking a promise to roll out eye care for disabled children in all special schools?’
You can find more resources to help with eye care, including easy read information, on SeeAbility’s website here