In November 2020, the Nystagmus Network shared news of a new research survey into people’s perceptions of nystagmus. The results have now been published.
The responses to the survey show that people with nystagmus tended to predict that the public would not think that the condition affects their daily lifestyle as much as it actually does.
It seems that members of the public had a greater understanding of challenges faced by individuals with nystagmus if they had met someone with nystagmus or if they had even heard of the condition.
This suggests that greater public awareness of the condition could be achieved through increased exposure of the condition through media and other online methods of promotion.
What this tells us, is that raising awareness of nystagmus is beneficial for everyone.
Future work
It is thought that further qualitative questionnaire studies regarding nystagmus could be carried out to identify specific issues that individuals with nystagmus have faced during lockdown and whether these are common to other disorders of vision.
