Completed BBCSS Project

Committee on Disability Determination for Individuals with Visual Impairments

Publication: Visual Impairments: Determining Eligibility for Social Security Benefits

There is at present no simple reliable method to determine the impact of a visual impairment that does not meet the criteria for statutory blindness. At the request of the Social Security Administration, a multi-disciplinary committee will survey the literature on the assessment of visual function and of the visual demands of everyday tasks to see if there are developments in these areas of research that can support disability determination practice. In addition the study will also produce a set of research priorities in vision science for the Social Security Administration. The current project will build on the work of the NRC Committee on Vision (1994). In line with that committee's final recommendation, the current project will explore what is known about the visual requirements of a range of representative tasks, and whether tests of visual function could be designed to provide better assessments of disability.