Lighthouse Guild: Blindness should qualify people for earlier COVID-19 vaccine
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Lighthouse Guild, an organization that provides services to the visually impaired, urged states to expand vaccine eligibility to include blindness as an underlying disease.
“We all want to be able to navigate our neighborhoods, but the signs and signals that sighted people use to move about in this changed world are not available to people who are blind,” Lighthouse Guild President and CEO Calvin W. Roberts, MD, said in a press release from the group.
Lighthouse described in the release how challenges brought on by social distancing are heightened for people with blindness because they greatly depend on their tactile sense.
People with blindness cannot always detect if others around them are wearing masks, putting them at increased risk. In addition, registering online for a vaccine is made more difficult for the visually impaired when websites do not use accessible technology. Large vaccination sites are difficult for them to navigate as well, according to the Lighthouse Guild.
“We need to make sure that the over 1 million people in our country who are legally blind are not left out in the cold as our vaccination program moves forward,” Roberts said.
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