Am I legally blind?

Question

I was born premature and had a retina detachment in my right eye because it didn't develop all the way.

My eyesight with glasses in my left eye is 25/20 and the right eye is nothing. without glasses is like 100/20.

My frames are -13 or something close to that... am I legally blind?

Answer 1

No. In order to be legally blind, you need to be -24/20 or greater.

Answer 2

20/200 that cannot be corrected with lenses is considered to be legally blind.

Answer 3

IF you can be corrected with lenses you are not legally blind. In North America and most of Europe, legal blindness is defined as visual acuity (vision) of 20/200 (6/60) or less in the better eye with best correction possible. This means that a legally blind individual would have to stand 20 feet (6.1 m) from an object to see it—with vision correction—with the same degree of clarity as a normally sighted person could from 200 feet (61 m). So, if you are correctable you are not legally blind. So, I am 20/400 uncorrected and 20/20 corrected with glasses or contacts. There is no "legal blindness" here with me per se becuase it is correctable. So I never say I am legally blind without my glasses because that is a misnomer. I can not see without my glasses, but I am correctable with my glasses or with contacts so I am not legally blind at all with or without them. If one of my eyes could not be corrected with glasses or contacts past 20/200 in my good eye and worse in my worst eye, then I would be legally blind with or without corrective lenses. You can be completely blind in one eye and not be legally blind if your good eye can be corrected better than 20/200.  Get it? Kind of weird but the "legally blind" thing is just there for government agencies to decide what benefits the blind get and how blind they need to be. It really is not a medical term.

Answer 4

If it can be corrected with glasses/contacts than you are not leagally blind.

I hate when people say I'm legally blind without my contacts in.  That does not make any sense, and they need to research the definition.

Answer 5

Umm i think you should ask your optometrist.

Answer 6

Jack Johnson

Answer 7

Where do numbers like 25/20, 100/20, -24/20, -27/20 come from ? They aren't real numbers that mean anything.

Queen is the only one who got it right.

Legally blind is when your best CORRECTED vision is 20/200 or worse.

What your visual acuity is WITHOUT correction doesn't matter.

Answer 8

No, you are not. A person is only legally blind if they cannot achieve better than 20/200 vision with the best reasonable correction (ie, a person looking through a bioptic might see the 20/50 line while having 20/200 vision- they are still considered blind because looking through a bioptic 24/7 is not reasonable correction) OR if their field of vision, in the case of retinal disorders especially, is less than 20 degrees.

No matter if your vision is 20/20 without glasses or 20/8000 without glasses, as long as you can see better than 20/200 with your glasses, you are not legally blind.