nvironmental barriers faced by people with vision impairment and blindness in their everyday life

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: purpose of this study was to evaluate the environmental barriers faced by people with vision impairment and blindness in their everyday and to increase the awareness to enhance the quality of life among the people of Pakistan by addressing these barriers.

METHOD: This descriptive cross-sectional study was done using self-designed questionnaire for evaluating the environmental challenges that people with visual impairment and blindness face in their everyday life at College of Ophthalmology and Allied Vision Sciences, Mayo Hospital, Lahore. Different types of barriers were assessed such as physical, social, attitude, educational, etc. It included 88 people with severe visual impairment and blindness via non probability convenient sampling. After descriptive analysis, Pearson chi-square was used to test the significance of the results.

RESULTS: Among 88 participants enrolled in this study, physical barriers were assessed and majority of the visually impaired (45.4%) and blind (90.9%) feel lack of confidence in being physically active and 86.3% have fear of being injured due to blindness.Among 52.3% who are getting education, only 18.1% study in special school. Most of the people with blindness usually depend on others (77.2%). Among them,88.6% need someone to walkaround and 77.2% depend on others in doing daily-life activities.56.8% face negative attitude of other people and 55.7% feel lack ofconfidence. 50% have difficulty in access to publictransport. The results are statistically significant (p≤0.01).

CONCLUSION: People with visual impairment and blindness usually face many physical barriers(restricted in visiting friends or family, fear of being injured), orientation and mobility barriers (difficulty in crossing roads without cane, unable to daily life activities
independently),attitude barriers(face negative attitude of others, feel themselves burdened), vocational barriers(lack of adaptive
equipment at workplace, lack of trust on skills and colleagues), sports barriers (lack of opportunities to participate in games) and face great difficulty in access to hospitals, public transport and educational institutions. The people with blindness usually suffer more due to environmental barriers.