[Handicap related to blindness].

Handicap related to blindness. The interest of vision professionals in visual impairment is recent, dating back to the early 1990s. This interest led to the creation in 1996 of the French society for low-vision patients, ARIBa. The epidemiological figures remain unclear, but the number of people in France with visual disabilities is around one million, together with the major public health concern of age-related macular degeneration and the risk of dependence of the elderly in activities of daily living. This is a major medical and social, but also economic concern. Other causes of visual impairment remain numerous, despite advances in the means of prevention and medical or surgical treatment. Moreover, the investment in basic and clinical research raises high expectations for the decades to come. It should be noted that despite the development of rehabilitation facilities, in which the French school for low-vision patients has particularly been active, the territorial network of rehabilitation responses to visual impairment remains extremely inadequate and unequal.