“Being legally blind, I lived in constant fear of being at higher risk of catching Covid due to my sight loss and now there’s Census data that proves I wasn’t wrong,” says reporter Emily Davison.

I’ve lived with severely limited vision all my life and mostly I live a pretty independent life free of feelings of vulnerability.

But that all changed in 2020 when Covid hit.

In today’s Cenus report, ONS revealed that people with visual impairments were more likely to die from Covid compared to those without.

Estimates suggest that visually impaired people between the ages of 30-69 were 8.4 times more likely to die from Covid - shown from hospital records.

Although there is no concrete answer to explain exactly why this is, there are certainly major factors that I believe came into play that could shed some light on these grim new findings.

One of the major challenges I and others like me faced was social distancing and trying to maintain a two-metre social distance without being able to see.

When you can’t see and you are being told to social distance, you have to rely on sighted people to avoid you and give you space, but this isn’t a guarantee.

Around that time, my first guide dog had retired, and I had to navigate the world without her using my cane in a society that had stringent rules when it came to giving everyone space.

After working with a guide dog for so many years I was thrown back into trying to negotiate without another pair of eyes guiding me.

In normal circumstances this wouldn’t have been an issue if I could have had access to long cane training and a sighted guide, but sadly this was not the case.

Social distancing measures weren’t always accessible to people who couldn’t see, one prime example being the arrows and stickers displayed on the floor.

The main issue being that they weren’t tactile so people with sight loss wouldn’t have any idea if they were walking in the correct place to avoid contact with people.

I had a number of instances where I got into altercations with people who weren’t happy that I wasn’t walking in the correct place.

Covid vaccines was also a major issue throughout the pandemic, whether it was getting them or having accessible information on them.

When the Covid vaccine programme was first rolled out being visually impaired alone wouldn’t classify you as being a high-risk case.

Even though many campaigners and sight loss advocates argued that people with sight loss and their support networks may need physical support from people outside their households for tasks like shopping and attending appointments.

Some visually impaired people, like myself, who had an underlying health condition that made them high risk did receive their dosage in the early stages of the vaccine.

However, those cases would have been on the grounds of their medical condition alone and not their sight loss.

When the vaccine was eventually made accessible to the mases, those with sight loss still had struggles and were often unnoticed.

People would have to visit the vaccine centres in person which were initially held in large spaces like community centres, church halls and leisure centres making them less easy to get to and negotiate if you couldn’t see.

Covid testing was equally inaccessible if you couldn’t see.

In the early stages, unless you lived in the same household with a person who, drove getting access to a covid testing site would have been near-on impossible.

However, home Covid testing kits were not readily accessible if you couldn’t see them, the instructions were not accessible and using them correctly could be difficult.

Although the Department of Health and Social Care did work towards improving this when they partnered with Be My Eyes, an app that allows sighted people to provide help to visually impaired people by video link on their smartphones.

Finally, one of the last but equally significant issues people like me faced over the Covid pandemic was getting access to supermarkets.

During the first lockdown supermarkets didn’t initially have a system in place to support their disabled customers.

Getting a priority delivery slot often felt like searching for a needle in a haystack and the thought of shopping in a supermarket in the early stages filled me with a sense of dread.

However, after consultation from charities like RNIB, Guide Dogs and Thomas Pocklington Trust this was remedied and supermarket chains like Sainsburys and Tesco began to over priority slots for people with disabilities like me.

Although the system wasn’t perfect and getting a slot wasn’t always possible with the volume of people who needed them.

Throughout the whole ordeal the one thing that frustrated me immensely was the lack of social awareness about the risks that people with visual impairments faced in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Census report today not only confirms what I’ve known all along, but also validates me and my experiences and many other like me.

It could become very easy to feel gaslight a lot of the time during those years and as if being sight impaired didn’t make you at any more risk of catching Covid than anyone else.

However, living in a world where all forms of social interaction and support had to be stripped back to its foundations meant that people like me really bore the brunt of its effect.

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