What to know
- View American Community Survey (ACS) data on associations between self-reported blindness and serious difficulty seeing and other self-reported disabilities.
- Non-vision–related disabilities include hearing, cognitive, ambulatory, self-care, and independent living difficulties.
- People who report having a non-vision–related disability are 15 to 20 times more likely to also report blindness or serious difficulty seeing.
Data and methods
These estimates are from the 2019 ACS. The ACS includes the question "Are you blind or have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses?" along with other questions on disability, including:
- Hearing: Is this person deaf or does he/she have serious difficulty hearing?
- Cognitive: Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does this person have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?
- Ambulatory: Does this person have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs?
- Self-care: Does this person have difficulty dressing or bathing?
- Independent living: Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does this person have difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor's office or shopping?
VEHSS calculates the prevalence rate as the weighted number of people who answered yes to the question divided by the weighted total number of respondents who answered yes or no multiplied by 100 for presentation as a percentage.
Keep Reading:
About the Data: American Community Survey
View these estimates in the VEHSS data explorer
You can explore these estimates and other data in detail in the VEHSS data explorer:
- Select Vision Problems and Blindness > Vision Loss and Blindness > Self-Reported Vision Loss > Blind or Difficulty Seeing Even With Glasses.
- Disabilities are included as Risk Factors for national and state-level estimates of self-reported vision loss in ACS data.
- These results can be stratified by age group, gender, and race/ethnicity.