About Our Work: Why We Do It
"...it's fantastic that we can have these books through the post and have up-to-date interesting ones sent to us. It's terrific."
"Living Paintings has made a huge difference to my daughter's life and I'd like to ask you to make a difference to other children's as well."
Imagine for a moment not being able to see. Frightening isn’t it? Therefore, it’s no great surprise then that research shows that 90% of people asked say that sight is the sense they most fear losing.
- There are up to 2 million people in the UK living with severe sight loss
- There are 20,000 blind and partially sighted children under the age of 16 in the UK
- Each day around 100 more people will register as blind or partially sighted
- One in twelve of us will become blind or partially sighted by the time we are 60
- One in six of us will become blind or partially sighted by the time we reach 75
The harsh reality is that around 60% of these people live in the extremes of poverty and suffer from isolation, exclusion and lack of support due to severely limited resources. To quote an RNIB report “To all extents they are the invisible millions that we don’t notice or think about”.
It is estimated that 80% of all the information that we receive reaches us via our eyes, a fact of particular importance for children who need to absorb and learn so much at a great pace in order to fulfill their potential and take their place in the world.
Research makes it clear that children definitely want to learn from, experience and do the same things as their sighted friends, brothers and sisters. From an educational perspective, all children are subject to the same National Curriculum requirements and, following government guidelines, 60% of visually impaired children are now in mainstream schools. The approach to provision for these children in mainstream schools varies across the country, and there is evidence to suggest that the provision of adequate resources for these children is limited, and in some cases, non existent.