For people with glaucoma, vision loss is expected, typically progressively worsening over time. As vision impairment worsens, some people feel their hearing also alters or is compromised. A 2020 study conducted by Anglia Ruskin University’s Vision and Eye Research Institute (VERI) corroborates this perception. Their findings show individuals with severe vision impairment have a more inaccurate judgment on the distance of noises compared to those with normal vision.* 

What they did

The study’s participants had varying levels of vision, from normal to severely impaired, and were presented with different types of noises, which included: 

• Speech
• Music
• Reverberation (echoes)
• Other noises

Upon hearing each of the different sounds, the participants were asked to: 

• Judge the distance of the sounds
• Estimate the size of the room

What they found

The study came to three main conclusions: 

1. As vision impairment worsened, the ability to identify sounds became more inaccurate.
2. For further distanced sounds, participants with severe vision impairment judged the sounds to be twice as far away compared to participants with normal vision. 
3. People with severe vision impairment judged the rooms to be three times larger than the participants with normal vision.

What it means 

It is known that people with full vision loss must rely on hearing for safety awareness and communication. Before this study, there was less data available on how hearing is affected by partial vision loss. Professor Shahina Pardhan, director of VERI, believes vision impairment could put a person at higher risk for injury.

“Our research found that more severely visually impaired people were less accurate in judging the distance of closer sounds,” stated Pardhan, “which may make it harder for them in real-life situations, for example such as crossing busy streets.”

*Anglia Ruskin University. (2020, June 3). Vision loss influences perception of sound: Study finds link between level of vision impairment and audio accuracy. ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200603194433.htm