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History of the Blind in California
As I cannot digitize braille, I am transcribing them here as blog posts. For updated statistics check out DisabilityStatistics.org
The World Health Organization of the United Nations, in launching the World Health Day observance in 1962, stated that the number of blind persons in the world exceeded 10 million. This number in general is based on census figures from various countries and may be too low. Other informal surveys suggest that the figure of 14 million is nearer to the truth. Unfortunately, no reliable statistics are available. One of the main obstacles to obtaining a true picture of the situation is the lack of an internationally acceptable definition of blindness. Until such a definition is generally accepted, it is impossible to assess the magnitude of the problem of giving adequate services to all people whose visual handicap is so great they are in need of these services. It is of equal importance to make sure that other individuals are not wrongly treated as blind, or benefit from services they do not need.
Existing definitions range from: (a) only counting the totally blind to (b) recognizing those persons who have 1/10th of normal sight as blind. The broader definition is usually found in economically and industrially more developed countries such as the United States, Canada and Great Britten.
In the United States the definition of blindness most frequently used by Federal and State governments reads as follows:
“central visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the better eye with the use of correcting lens. An eye which has a limitation in the field of vision so that the widest diameter of the visual field subtends an angle no greater than 20 degrees.” In simpler terms, a person is said to have visual acuity of 20/200 if at a distance of 20 feet he can recognize symbols and objects which a person with normal vision can recognize at a distance of 200 feet. It may also happen that an individual has practically normal central visual acuity, but the field of vision is so restricted that he can see only a very limited area at a time and can make very little practical use of his vision. A person who suffers from either of these types of visual handicap is so limited in his choice in occupation that from an economic point of view he is blind. On the basis of this definition the number of blind persons in the United States in 1967 was estimated to be at least 416,000 or an average of 2.14 blind persons for each one thousand of the general population. Of this number about 10 percent are under twenty-one years of age while at least 50 percent are over the age of sixty-five. Available figures also seem to indicate that there are more blind men than women, and that blindness is more prevalent among the non-white than the white population.
California ranks number 17 in the states with a rate of 1.84 per 1000 population. If this rate is applied to the state’s estimated population as of July 1, 1969 (20,000,000) it means that there at least 37,000 blind persons in the state, with about 33 percent being recipients of Aid to the Blind.