Introduction
Farsightedness (hyperopia) is a condition where the eye focuses light in the wrong place, resulting in things up close look fuzzy or blurry 1. Most people with farsightedness are born with it 1.
Children with severe farsightedness may be at higher risk for amblyopia or lazy eye 1
Presbyopia is similar to hyperopia in that things look blurry or fuzzy up close 2. Instead of being a condition that a person is born with, it is one that occurs over time as a normal part of aging 2. It occurs because the eye’s lens gets less flexible over time, which causes it to stops focusing light correctly on the retina 2.
As of 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 826 million people worldwide have presbyopia 3.
Design Considerations
Most people with farsightedness or presbyopia are able to correct it with glasses or contacts 1 2 but for some people those assistive technologies don’t provide enough correction to see as well as people who don’t need vision correction.
The design considerations for low vision apply to people with significant uncorrectable refraction errors and to people who are without their glasses or contacts.
Additional resources
- TBD
- Farsightedness (Hyperopia) by the National Eye Institute[↩][↩][↩][↩]
- Presbyopia by the National Eye Institute[↩][↩][↩][↩]
- Blindness and Vision Impairment by the World Health Organization, dated 10 August 2023[↩]