What Causes Blindness?
Vision problems can develop before a baby is born. Sometimes, parts of the eyes don’t form the way they should. A kid’s eyes might look fine, but the brain has trouble processing the information they send. The optic nerve sends pictures to the brain, so if the nerve doesn’t form correctly, the baby’s brain won’t receive the messages needed for sight. Blindness can be genetic (say: juh-neh-tik) or inherited (say: in-her-ut-ed), which means that this problem gets passed down to a kid from parents through genes. Blindness also can be caused by an accident, if something hurts the eye. That’s why it’s so important to protect your eyes when you play certain sports, such as hockey. Some illnesses, such as diabetes, can damage a person’s vision over time. Other eye diseases, such as cataracts (say: kah-tuh-rakts), can cause vision problems or blindness, but they usually affect older people.
Of all the blind people in the world, only about 5% were born blind; the other 95% became blind as a result of diseases or injuries to the eyes or the brain. Although there are about 14 million people in the world who are called “blind,” there are actually many degrees of blindness. Those who are totally blind cannot even tell l
