Suzie Wright

Direct costs of blindness in Australia

This study calculated the direct financial costs of blindness to the Australian government and community. Three case studies, representative of Australians with severely impaired vision, were used to calculate the annual costs associated with blindness. The costs include pensions, subsidies, concessions, equipment and services. Case 1 was a retired person with age‐related macular degeneration, case 2 a working aged person with diabetic retinopathy, and case 3 a school student with congenital vision impairment. Sensitivity analysis was used to show the possible range of costs for each case. For case 1, direct cost was

Integrating theory and practice in the pre-service teacher education practicum

14 686 with a range from

Changes in attitudes and practices of optometrists in their management of diabetic retinopathy after the release of NHMRC guidelines

9749 to

Changes in management of diabetic retinopathy by Australian ophthalmologists as a result of the NHMRC clinical guidelines

22 507. The cost for case 2 was

Raising levels of school student engagement and retention in rural, regional and disadvantaged areas: is it a lost cause?

17 701 ranging from

Vision impairment and handicap: The RVIB Employment Survey

9669 to

Issues related to students' decisions to remain in school beyond Year 10

26 720. Costs associated with care and education of case 3 were

Licorice Production and Manufacturing: All-sorts of Practical Applications for Statistics

15 948 ranging from

Parent–child connectedness for schooling and students’ performance and aspirations: An exploratory investigation

5106 to

Digging into Australian Data with Tinkerplots

23 798. In addition to the social costs to a person who is blind, there are significant financial costs to the government and the community that will increase substantially with the ageing of the Australian population.