COVID-19 Makes Life Harder for the Visually Impaired

All of our lives have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is safe to say that those impacted the most are people living with vision loss or other disabilities. Simply put, COVID-19 makes life harder for the visually impaired. The pandemic has forced sighted people to lend their hand to the visually impaired due to contraction fears. How do you know if you are six feet away from someone when you are blind?

Children living with vision loss have to rely on verbal descriptions over video chats to learn new skills, which is less than ideal. People living with sight loss are all too familiar with social isolation and mobility limitations, but the pandemic has severely exacerbated such realities.

"Everybody's feeling kind of shut in right now and out of touch with people, but we already have that isolation. So for us, it just has deepened even more," said Diane Wilkinson, who has retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative retinal disease.

Please reach out to SDCB to learn more about our vision rehabilitation programs and services.

"Visually impaired face new challenges navigating a world remade by COVID-19"