World Braille Day 2023: Vision Care highlights significance of regular eye testing to avoid visual impairments and even blindness

Vision Care, Sri Lanka’s largest vision and eye wear solutions provider, is celebrating World Braille Day and acknowledging the immense, life-changing contribution made by Louis Braille in transforming the lives of millions of visually impaired people across the globe by providing them access to a better quality of life and greater acceptance in society.

World Braille Day is celebrated on January 4, in honour of Louis Braille, the French educator and inventor of the globally-acclaimed reading and writing systemintended for use by visually impaired people.Braille is a tactile representation of alphabetic and numerical symbols using six dots to represent each letter and number, as well as musical, mathematical and scientific symbols.In November 2018, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) officially approved World Braille Day. The first World Braille Day was observed on January 2019 and since then, the day has been celebrated every year on this date.

Braille is used worldwide and remains virtually unchanged to this day. The World Braille Day brings attention to the importance of caring for the visually impaired people of the world.Louis Braille’s gift to the world has transformed the lives of millions of people around the world who are blind or visually impaired and they benefit from his work every day. The day also acknowledges that those with visual impairments deserve the same standard of human rights as everyone else. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) states that approximately 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment. In at least 1 billion of these cases, vision impairment could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed. This 1 billion people includes those with moderate or severe distance vision impairment or blindness due to unaddressed refractive error, cataract, age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, as well as near vision impairment caused by unaddressed presbyopia. The organisation has been striving to reduce the day-to-day challenges individuals with vision impairment or blindness face and provides practical solutions for them to lead healthier, happier lives. Global records indicate that blind or low vision is on the rise as the global population ages and human life span increases. However, the World Health Organization points out that up to 80% of vision impairment worldwide is avoidable with better access to healthcare and treatment.

Having reinforced its position as Sri Lanka’s largest vision and eye wear solutions provider, Vision Care’s vast islandwide branch network provides easy access to anyone seeking to have their sight tested in order to detect problems early and prevent blindness. All Vision Care branches offers comprehensive eye care solutions for customers to get their vision tested conveniently. Vision Care’s professional optometrists use only state-of-the-art equipment in order to test and correct any diagnosed visual impairment, enabling customers can to keep their vision at optimum health and lead an enhanced quality of life.

Vision Care has been at the forefront of the technological revolution in eye care in Sri Lanka for over 3 decades by providing high-quality eye testing, spectacles, sunglasses and contact lenses. Customers are able to select from a wide array of top global brands for frames for reading glasses and spectacles at all branches.