Low vision is a vision problem that makes it hard to do everyday activities. It cannot be fixed with glasses, contact lenses, or other standard treatments like medicine or surgery. Low vision may cause difficulty with activities like: Reading, driving, recognizing people’s faces, telling colors apart, seeing your television or computer screen clearly.

What are the types of low vision? The type of low vision that you have depends on the disease or condition that caused your low vision. The most common types of low vision are: Central vision loss (not being able to see things in the center of your vision); Peripheral vision loss (not being able to see things out of the corners of your eyes); Night blindness (not being able to see in low light); Blurry or hazy vision.

What causes low vision? Many different eye conditions can cause low vision, but the most common causes are: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD); cataracts; diabetic retinopathy (a condition that can cause vision loss in people with diabetes); glaucoma. Low vision is more common in older adults because many of the diseases that can cause it are more common in older adults. Aging doesn’t cause low vision on its own. Eye and brain injuries and certain genetic disorders can also cause low vision from National Eye Institute.

• National Organization for Albinism and Hyperpigmentation
• National Eye Institute

Cerebral visual impairment (sometimes called cortical visual impairment or CVI) is a disorder caused by damage to the parts of the brain that process vision. It’s most common in babies and young children but can continue into adulthood.

A child with CVI has vision problems that are caused by their brain that can’t be explained by a problem with their eyes. Normally, the eyes send electrical signals to the brain, and the brain turns those signals into the images you see. If you have CVI, your brain has trouble processing and understanding these signals.

CVI is a leading cause of vision loss among kids in the United States. For some children with CVI, vision gets better over time, but everybody is different. If your child has CVI, make sure that they get early intervention and therapy, educational support, and other special services to help them develop and learn. from National Eye Institute.

Strategy to See

Deaf-blindness means concomitant hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for children with deafness or children with blindness. (34 CFR 300.7 (c) (2))

• National Center on Deaf-Blindness
• Nevada Dual Sensory Impairment Project
• Hellen Keller National Center
• National Family Association for Deafblind

• Early Intervention Programs (External Link)
• National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled
• Resources for parents/families by Region/Area Reno/Sparks
  • Northern Nevada Center for Independent Living National Federation of the Blind – Nevada Chapter