Granite 5 writes:
More than 75% of visual impairment is avoidable, highlighting how critical it is for everybody to have regular eye tests. Education and awareness can help to impact these statistics:
- 36 million people are blind
- 253 million people are blind or vision impaired
- The prevalence of blindness and vision impairment combined has dropped from 4.58% in 1990 to 3.37% in 2015
- 55% of moderate or severely vision impaired people are women
- Top causes of visual impairment: refractive errors, cataracts and glaucoma
- Top causes of blindness: cataracts, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration.
Christian, our Head of Project Delivery knows first hand how the effects of blindness can change lives - his father had an eye removed due to cancer in 2015, which if discovered earlier could have potentially been treated and saved. Christian says “My father is in fact very lucky, he’s only lost 50% of his vision, but it’s changed all of our lives and resulted in a heightened sensitivity to eye health for all of our friends the family”.
Granite 5’s longest serving team member Ellie, who joined in 2001 has lived with a degrading visual impairment her whole life, today living independently with about 5% vision. She was the driving force behind Granite 5 developing our own highly accessible content management system, eGenius CMS in 2005, which continues to be used today by several clients, including some with visual impairment.
Pledge
The aim of WSD is to raise public awareness of issues surrounding blindness and visual impairment, and to educate about blindness prevention.
We're proud to join the global campaigns pledge to encourage friends, family and colleagues to take regular eye tests. Reinforcing some of these facts should be enough to encourage everybody to take their eye tests seriously.
More information
The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness organisers the World Sight Day campaign, to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment.
Granite 5 is a leading digital agency based near to Cambridge, UK. We have a creative and pragmatic process to delivering user-centric websites and effective digital marketing solutions. We work with many clients in the blind and visual impairment sector including Birmingham Vision, Blind Aid, Greater London Fund for the Blind, Croydon Vision, Merton Vision, Metro Blind Sports, the Thomas Pocklington Trust.
We believe in long-term partnerships and becoming an extension of your team, working together to help you to maximise your business potential by acting as a true partner. Some of our clients have been with us for over 10 years, which is testament to the quality of our relationships.