Research briefing
Living with Sight Loss: Updating the
National Picture
1. Introduction
People with sight loss experience inequality across many areas of
their lives. Living with Sight Loss: Updating the National
Picture takes information from two national surveys to describe
the extent of those inequalities for adults in Great Britain in the
period 2010 to 2013.
Three years ago, RNIB and NatCen Social Research published
Circumstances of People with Sight Loss (2012), which used
the results of the Life Opportunities Survey and Understanding
Society to describe the lives of people with sight loss. Both
surveys have since been updated. The Living with Sight Loss
report presents the latest findings. It highlights the circumstances
of adults with sight loss across a wide range of areas, and makes
comparisons with adults without impairments, after controlling for
differences in age and sex profile.
This research briefing and the full report will be of interest to
people working in the sight loss sector and other professionals who
are seeking to further understand the circumstances of blind and
partially sighted people.
2. Method
2.1 Secondary analysis
Two publicly available, large-scale survey datasets were used in
this report.
 The Life Opportunities Survey is longitudinal, which means it
follows respondents over time and collects information on
changes in their situations and experiences. Respondents were
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interviewed for the first time at Wave One (June 2009 – March
2011). The findings were used for the Circumstances of People
with Sight Loss report. A second set of interviews were
conducted at Wave Two (June 2010 – March 2012), and it is
these responses that we examine here. The findings presented
throughout this report are drawn from the Life Opportunities
Survey, except for wellbeing data.
 Understanding Society is a major survey of the socio-economic
circumstances and attitudes of people living in Britain. It is
funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The
sample is drawn from the whole population and is longitudinal.
We used Understanding Society’s wellbeing data from the
period January 2012 to December 2013.
Together, RNIB and NatCen Social Research looked at the survey
questions and agreed which topics were suitable for analysis. For
each topic we calculated what proportion of the adult sight loss
population gave a particular response. The proportion of people
with other types of impairment and with no impairment was then
also calculated for comparison. Unless otherwise stated,
differences mentioned in the report have been found to be
statistically significant.
2.2 Defining sight loss
To understand which respondents had sight loss we looked at
whether, in their own judgement, respondents said they had
difficulties seeing. Although respondents’ own reports aren’t an
objective assessment, they do provide a good indication of who’s
affected by sight loss.
We classified respondents to the Life Opportunities Survey as a
person with sight loss if they reported that they have:
 difficulty seeing or wear glasses or contact lenses
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 and “moderate” or “great” difficulty either seeing ordinary
newsprint at arm’s length or clearly seeing the face of someone
across a room
 and this limits the amount or kind of activities that the
respondent could do.
All respondents to the Understanding Society survey were asked
whether they had “any long-standing physical or mental
impairment, illness or disability”. Respondents who said yes were
then asked whether this meant that they had substantial difficulties
in various areas of their life, including “sight (apart from wearing
standard glasses)”. We used this question to identify respondents
with sight loss.
2.3 Age standardisation
The results were standardised for age and sex. This means that
any differences we observe between groups cannot simply be
attributed to the fact people with sight loss are older than the
sighted population.
3. Key findings from the research
3.1 Respondents with sight loss are nearly three
times as likely as respondents with no impairment to
report feeling depressed.
44 per cent of respondents with sight loss said they’d recently felt
more unhappy or depressed than usual, compared with 15 per
cent of respondents with no impairment.
In the Circumstances of People with Sight Loss report, 38 per cent
of respondents with sight loss reported feeling depressed. The
current figure of 44 per cent is significantly higher.
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3.2 Respondents with sight loss are 24 times more
likely than respondents with no impairment to report
bad or very bad general health.
24 per cent of respondents with sight loss reported that their
general health was bad or very bad, compared with one per cent of
respondents without an impairment.
50 per cent of respondents with sight loss reported good or very
good general health compared with 91 per cent of people without
impairments.
Nearly a third of respondents with sight loss reported some or a lot
of difficulty accessing the health service in the last 12 months,
compared with 15 per cent of respondents with no impairment. The
proportion of respondents with sight loss who experienced difficulty
has remained stable since the last wave of the survey.
3.3 Most respondents with sight loss have formal
qualifications, but comparisons to respondents with
no impairments still show signs of inequality.
Three quarters of respondents with sight loss were educated to at
least O Level or GCSE at Grade A to C. This proportion is similar
to those without impairments (79 per cent). However respondents
with sight loss were much less likely than people with no
impairments to have a degree level qualification (19 per cent
compared with 28 per cent).
64 per cent of respondents with sight loss said they had access to
learning opportunities, compared with 86 per cent of people with
no impairment. When asked what limits access to learning
opportunities, the most commonly reported barrier was financial.
48 per cent of respondents with sight loss reported that lack of
money limited their access to learning opportunities, as did 54 per
cent of respondents with no impairment.
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3.4 Respondents with sight loss are less likely to be
in work than respondents with no impairments.
56 per cent of respondents with sight loss hadn’t done paid work in
the last week, compared with 40 per cent of respondents without
impairments.
Respondents who said that they were limited in what work they
could do were asked what limited them. The most common
answers for respondents with sight loss were a health condition,
illness, or impairment (74 per cent) and disability related reasons
(56 per cent). A third said anxiety or lack of confidence, compared
with six per cent of respondents with no impairment. A quarter said
they had difficulty with transport, compared with six per cent of
respondents with no impairment.
Among those who weren’t working, respondents with sight loss
were about as likely as those without impairments to have looked
for work in the last four weeks (12 per cent compared to 13 per
cent).
3.5 Respondents with sight loss are less likely to be
high earners and more likely to be on a low income.
Nine per cent of respondents with sight loss earn more than £500
a week, compared with 25 per cent of respondents with no
impairment.
Nearly half of respondents with sight loss earn less than £200 a
week compared with a third of respondents with no impairment.
There are some significant differences from the Circumstances of
People with Sight Loss report. The proportion of blind and partially
sighted respondents who earn £500 or more a week is significantly
lower, at nine per cent, than previously (13 per cent). However, the
proportion earning less than £200 a week is also significantly lower
than previously (48 per cent compared to 54 per cent).
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3.6 Respondents with sight loss are more likely than
those without impairments to have had difficulties
accessing benefits services.
38 per cent of respondents with sight loss reported some or a lot of
difficulty accessing benefits services, compared with 25 per cent of
respondents without sight loss.
The proportion of respondents with sight loss experiencing
difficulties has remained stable since the last wave of the survey.
The survey asked for the causes of difficulty. Most respondents
with sight loss reporting a difficulty said that that the problems were
caused by difficulty contacting by phone (65 per cent) and
unhelpful or inexperienced staff (57 per cent).
3.7 The survey’s findings suggest that respondents
with sight loss face barriers to participation in a range
of life areas.
Respondents with sight loss were around five times more likely
than respondents with no impairments to report limited
participation in work (46 per cent compared with nine per cent),
around six times more likely to report limited participation in
transport (45 per cent compared with seven per cent), and 10
times more likely to report limited participation in personal
relationships (20 per cent compared with two per cent).
The majority of respondents with sight loss said their participation
was limited by their health condition, illness or impairment (58 per
cent) or their disability (39 per cent). Nearly a third (32 per cent)
said they were limited for financial reasons.
3.8 Around a third of respondents with sight loss
have difficulties going into buildings
Over the last year, a third of respondents with sight loss had
difficulty going into buildings at least sometimes, rising to 41 per
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cent among those with severe sight loss. A third of respondents
with sight loss had difficulty moving about and finding their way
around buildings at least some of the time.
Common causes of difficulty were the transport getting to the
building, lack of ramps and handrails in approach areas, stairs,
doors and narrow corridors, inadequate lifts of escalators, and the
attitudes of others.
3.9 Respondents with sight loss are more than four
times as likely as respondents with no impairments to
report feeling they had been a victim of hate crime
13 per cent of respondents with sight loss reported feeling they
had been a victim of a hate crime, compared with 3 per cent of
respondents with no impairment.
10 per cent of respondents with sight loss said they experienced
discrimination because of a disability. When the survey asked who
had treated them unfairly, 44 per cent of those reporting
discrimination said people in the street, a third said an employer,
and a third said health staff such as a GP, nurse, or hospital
employee.
3.10 Respondents with sight loss were 50 per cent
more likely to live alone than those with no
impairment
21 per cent of respondents with sight loss lived alone, compared
with 14 per cent of respondents with no impairment. However, the
proportion of respondents with sight loss who look after someone
they live with (16 per cent) is twice as high as the proportion of
respondents without impairments who do so (eight per cent).
4. Conclusions
 Since the previous waves of Understanding Society and the Life
Opportunities Survey, circumstances have worsened in some
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respects for blind and partially sighted people. 44 per cent
reported feeling more than usually depressed, which was
significantly higher than in the previous wave of the survey (38
per cent).
 The proportion of blind and partially sighted respondents who
earn £500 or more a week is significantly lower, at nine per
cent, than in the previous wave of the survey (13 per cent).
However, the proportion earning less than £200 a week is also
significantly lower than previously (48 per cent compared to 54
per cent).
 In other areas, such as accessing health and benefits services,
respondents’ circumstances have remained stable since the last
wave.
 Key areas of inequality are employment, participation, and
experience of hate crime. All three of these areas pose concern,
as a much higher percentage of respondents with sight loss
report difficulties than those without impairments.
5. Further information
The full report can be downloaded from the research section of the
RNIB website: www.rnib.org.uk/research.
The reference for the report is:
Flynn K and Lord C (2015) Living with sight loss: Updating the
national picture. RNIB and NatCen Social Research.
For further information please contact RNIB Evidence and Service
Impact by emailing [email protected].
© RNIB 2015
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