Skip the primary navigation if you do not want to read it as the next section.
Skip the main content if you do not want to read it as the next section.
Epidemiological data on visual impairment in England and Wales is hard to reliably ascertain. The number of blind people in Britain has been counted since 1851, starting with a simple declaration of blindness on census returns. These were discontinued after 1911, but after the Blind Persons Act of 1920 with its statutory benefits to the blind, a register of blind persons was set up.
Since then, various certificates, first the BD8 and now the Certificate of Vision Impairment (CVI) have been designed and updated. The ECVI project aims to develop an electronic CVI (ECVI) that will collect better quality data and provide up-to-date readily available information on sight-threatening eye conditions in England and Wales. The project will cover software testing and adaptation to enable it to work within hospitals with varying patient administration systems or electronic patient record systems and to ensure accessibility to users with a wide range of computer literacy. We envisage testing in local hospitals and remote hospitals – including at least one hospital in Wales.
We have successfully obtained grant funding from Guide Dogs for the Blind for a three-year project and the project is overseen by a steering committee made up of representatives from the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, the Department of Health, Vision 2020, Guide Dogs, social services, and the Royal National Institute for the Blind. Our contract with the Department of Health makes it clear that the CVI data is crown copyright and does not ever become the property of Moorfields.
For further information regarding the ECVI project please visit our website
