Scottish Government

Section 3: Visually Impaired Under 65-year-olds

Time series data showing the number of visually impaired people under the age of 65 over the last 10 years is shown in the chart below.

It shows a gradual rise in the number of registered blind persons up until 2001 before remaining relatively constant at between 4,850 and 5,218 from 2001 to 2007. Registered partially sighted persons have increased year on year throughout the initial 9-year period, but then dropped back in 2007.

Chart 3: Time Series of Registered Blind and Registered Partially Sighted Persons Aged 65 and Under, 1998-2007

Overall the number of registered visually impaired under 65-year-olds has decreased by 3 per cent on last year. The ratio per 1,000 population is at around 2.0 after rising gradually to the level of the past few years (see Table 3a). Data on under 65's by local authority and sex is shown in Annex A on page 6.

Table 3a: Number of Registered Visually Impaired Under 65-year-olds, 1998 - 2007

¹ Data for under 65-year-olds should be more reliable than older age groups due to lower mortality rates.
Source: Registration of Blind and Partially Sighted Persons Return Form SWB

Background Information:

Data was collected on persons registered with local authorities as at 31 March 2007.

The information is derived from returns made to the Scottish Executive by Scottish local authorities. The return asks for the number of blind and partially sighted persons by age, sex and additional disabilities. It does not include persons who may meet the criteria for being blind or partially sighted but have not registered with their local authority.

The Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 gives local authorities the power to maintain a register of people who are blind or partially sighted. However registration is voluntary and while registration provides access to a number of benefits and concessions there remain a large number of people who meet the criteria but are not registered. Research in 1991 ¹, undertaken at a UK level, indicated that the number of people on registers is some 23 per cent of those eligible. In 2001 they estimated it to be under a third.

'Think dual sensory' published in 1997 by the Department of Health suggested that some 2,000 people in Scotland could have some degree of deafblindness. Our latest figures show that there are 1,558 people registered as deafblind in Scotland and a further 955 people registered as partially sighted and deaf.. This suggests that people are more likely to register if they have multiple disabilities.

Additionally, there are known problems with previous years' data where people have not been removed from the register of blind and partially sighted persons. Many local authorities have in recent years improved their registers by comparing with the register of deaths and this may in part explain the decrease in the number of registered blind persons since 2000.

Returns were received from all local authorities:

Glasgow have substantially revised their figures in recent years following a move to a new management information system. This has resulted in improvements to data quality for 2006 and 2007 but care should be taken when comparing 2005 and 2006 figures as many of the changes seen are largely due to changes in the Glasgow figures.

For example, Glasgow have improved their data collection on additional disabilities resulting in an increase in the overall number of visually impaired people with additional disabilities.

Fife were unable to provide complete information on additional disabilities. Care should therefore be taken when interpreting figures as a small amount of data has been estimated.

In 2006, East Dunbartonshire undertook a data cleaning exercise which resulted in significant decreases in the figures published last year. For 2007, the number of registered blind and partially sighted in East Dunbartonshire have increased and their 2006 figures have been adjusted to bring them in line with 2005 and 2007 levels.

2004 based population projections from GRO(S) have been used to calculate rates per 1000 population in this Statistics Release.

Further Information

Further details and analysis of the data presented in this Statistics Release are available on request from the address given below. The Statistics Release is available in large print and on the Internet by accessing the Scottish Executive web site ( www.scotland.gov.uk).

Contact: Steven Gillespie

Tel: 0131 244 3777
E-mail: SWStat@scotland.gov.uk

This statistics release was published on 28 November 2007