The Estimated Prevalence of Visual Impairment among People with Learning Disabilities in the UK.

Eric Emerson and Janet Robertson

RNIB, 2011

Although there is considerable research evidence that visual impairments are more common among people with learning disabilities, there is no robust epidemiological data on the prevalence of visual impairments in people with learning disabilities in the UK. Consequently there has been no overall estimate of the number of people with learning disabilities in the UK with seeing difficulties.

Researchers from the Centre for Disability Research (CeDR) at Lancaster University used prevalence rates from a major study of adults with learning disabilities in the Netherlands, and a study of children carried out in Denmark, to answer the following questions:

• How many people with learning disabilities in the UK are likely to be blind or partially sighted?
• How many people with learning disabilities in the UK are likely to have refractive error?
• How will these numbers change over the coming decades?

LDT Editor

See Full Bio