The "financial and time cost of blindness" to the approximately 11,500 blind, deafblind and vision-impaired RNZFB members and their families (e.g. "individuals") is a whopping $60.9m per year¹, according to independent research commissioned by RNZFB.

In addition to the $60.9m in costs of blindness shouldered by "individuals", costs of blindness to "society" (e.g. Government and charitable organisations not including the RNZFB), friends and neighbours - amount to another $27.6m (including approximately $19m in benefits and compensation paid to persons for the primary reason of blindness or vision impairment, but excluding ACC).

"The individual costs of blindness are understood as those extra, non-optional costs incurred by blind or vision-impaired (RNZFB members) because of their blindness or vision impairment. The costs are above and beyond those that would be encountered if the person did not have a vision impairment," according to the research (available in accessible formats through RNZFB).

This Cost of Blindness research, conducted by Gravitas Research and Strategy Ltd and Market Economics Ltd, shows that the individual costs of blindness "at a personal level can be diverse and highly individual", and can be grouped into these main categories:

• carrying out domestic tasks $24m
• day to day travel (excl work travel) $13.6m
• shopping $5.4m (greater reliance on others to undertake shopping, additional time taken to shop, lost savings due to difficulty of shopping and capitalising on sales)
• recreation $4.8m
• specialised equipment $3.2m
• medical $1.95m

(While these costs are quite large, additional analysis of this data, shows that even this excellent report does not tell the whole story about the cost of blindness.)

According to the Gravitas/Market Economics research, the costs of blindness can be diverse and highly individual, with a myriad of variables, ranging from the timing of the onset of blindness to the amount of support available. The magnitude of costs of blindness may also change over time e.g. ageing commonly carries additional costs of blindness for RNZFB members.

Paula Daye, RNZFB Chief Executive, says: "Everyone involved in the blindness community knows that being blind or vision-impaired is expensive for individuals, families and society – in actual costs, time costs and opportunity costs. But determining the cost of blindness is like asking how long a piece of string is. No-one anywhere in the world has come up with the perfect, undisputed research on the cost of blindness. It's just too complex.

"This research cannot be used to derive a meaningful average cost per individual RNZFB member; the variations are too great for this type of averaging to have any meaning. But we believe it is the best research on the qualitative costs of blindness ever done in New Zealand and should prove enormously useful for the Foundation and Government to work with."

RNZFB Chairman Don McKenzie, who is blind and whose wife is vision-impaired, says the RNZFB commissioned this research to inform Government, to protect the "Blindness Benefit" and to show that many beneficiaries with serious long-term disabilities could become taxpayers with the right sort of support.²

The completion of this major project comes at a critical time, as:

The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is planning to create a Single Core Benefit that could affect the Blindness Benefit, which is provided to approximately 1320 RNZFB members (2002 information)

The MSD and the Health Research Council are preparing to launch an ambitious, multi-year research project to determine the total cost of disability in New Zealand

"I am delighted that we have completed this significant research and can deliver it to Central Government, along with additional analysis that makes even more compelling reading," says Don, a member of MSD's Client Reference Group on the Government's Disability Strategy.

Don has championed the cause of RNZFB members, and the "uniqueness of blindness as a disability; the real needs of individuals with all significant disabilities should be met with common- sense solutions". The RNZFB has argued historically that Government must never change criteria and refuse to provide a Blindness Benefit to blind people in employment. "If you are blind and employed, your costs go up, not down – because of adaptive technology equipment, transportation, and the like. If the goal is to get more blind and vision-impaired people into employment, the Blindness Benefit must remain as it is. You don't want to penalize blind people for succeeding," says Don.

The MSD has promised that no-one on a benefit would be worse off under the proposed changes. The RNZFB seeks reassurances that this remains the case, and asks that Government accept as "given" – due in part to this Cost of Blindness research – that there are significant and wide-ranging costs of blindness and vision impairment.

The RNZFB and the Association of Blind Citizens of New Zealand Inc (ABC NZ Inc) will be presenting the Cost of Blindness research to a wide range of Ministers, MPs and Ministry officials. ABC NZ played a major role in bringing the Cost of Blindness research project to fruition and, over the decades, lobbying to protect the Blindness Benefit.

Additional Analysis Shows TRUE Cost of Blindness Even Higher

Interesting Research Snapshots

Cost of Blindness NOT Included in Research Findings

Personal Stories - Cost of Blindness

Actual RNZFB Member Quotes from Cost of Blindness Research

Definitions

The definition of blindness used in this research is that used by the WHO (1997) – total blindness is defined as anything less than visual acuity of 3/60 but not including 3/60; low vision is defined as anything less than 6/18 but not including 6/18. This is stricter than the RNZFB's criteria for membership – your visual acuity does not exceed 6/24 in the better eye with corrective lenses, or you have serious limitations in your field of vision generally not greater than 20 degrees in the widest diameter.

Research Methodology

Information in this report was collected through: a national survey of 200 RNZFB members using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing; 11 in-depth key informant interviews; four focus groups with RNZFB members; a review of national and international literature on the costs of blindness; and an extensive review of secondary data sources. The report was completed by Gravitas/Market Economics in December 2004. Analysis work was commissioned by the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind and the Association of Blind Citizens (NZ) Inc in 2005. The report was released publicly in March 2006.

Sampling Limitations

The survey sample is considered "detailed and robust and therefore provides comprehensive cost data on the sample collected," according to the researchers. It was considered that this research, and limited resources, would best be done seeking to emphasise "depth rather than breadth."

¹ This is only related to the costs of blindness experienced by RNZFB members, their friends and families. If these findings were extrapolated onto the much larger blind and vision-impaired population of 46,700 (as estimated by leading New Zealand Ophthalmologists), the annual cost of blindness would be $359m. The RNZFB does not believe this extrapolation is valid but, clearly, this larger group would indeed bear costs of blindness. In order to put a financial value on time spent undertaking tasks and helping blind and vision-impaired people in addition to time that sighted people would spend on such activities, the time was valued at $12 an hour, consistent with monetary value assigned to volunteer time in the "Value-Added for Voluntary Agencies" (VAVA) project conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

² In 1924, an amendment to the Pensions Act 1896 meant that the blind were the first disability group to become eligible to receive a pension.

ends

For additional information or to arrange interviews, please ring:

Bill Moore, Head of RNZFB Corporate Communications on 09 355-6867; 0275 508 061; bmoore