Source: Radio New Zealand
Lead researcher Cain Richardson said the difference in life expectancy was stark. 123rf
New research has found blind or visually impaired New Zealanders die 9 years earlier on average, and make significantly less money.
The report by Blind and Low Vision NZ used anonymised data from StatsNZ to compare the experience of people with visual impairments to other groups.
Lead researcher Cain Richardson told Nine to Noon the difference in life expectancy was stark.
The average age of death for severely visually impaired people was 71, compared to the wider average of 80.
“The stories I’ve heard from a lot of my blind colleagues and friends is anecdotal stories of blind people living shorter lives from things such as, if you have advanced bowel cancer and you don’t have eyesight you’re not going to be able to see blood in your stool, so you’re not going to be picking it up until advanced stages of the disease,” he said.
“It was interesting taking anecdotal stories like that and being able to confirm it through a median age of death.”
Richardson said working-age blind people also made significantly less money than the broader population.
“60 percent of the severely visually impaired population have a calendar year income between 20 and 40,000 dollars a year, which is reflective of what you would receive on the benefit, and then that’s going to have snowball effects onto the rest of your life course outcomes,” he explained.
“What it does capture is the true cost of blindness, in the sense your poverty limits your agency and the ability to make choices to effect your other life course outcomes.”
Andrea Midgen, the CEO of Blind and Low Vision NZ, said the report provided empirical evidence to back the organisation’s campaigning.
“Without this data we can’t make strong evidence-based decisions or advise the government effectively, it really tells us where support is most needed,” she said.
“There’s a lot of policy changes we would like to promote. Particularly at the moment it’s about employment and things like accessibility.”
“There are perceptions out there that people from our community can’t do a job like anybody else, and the lack of awareness and education in this space is a really serious issue.”
Midgen said future studies would hone in on specific issues impacting the blind community.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
