Senses are the physiological methods of perception. The traditional five senses are sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste: a classification attributed to Aristotle. Sight or vision is the ability of the brain and eye to detect electromagnetic waves within the visible range (light) interpreting the image as "sight" thus, the inability to see is called blindness.

The mere function of the human eye is to see things. The shapes, colors, texts, etc. are carried to the brain through the optic nerves, eventually the brain interprets the message coming from the eye. An individual with an understanding can interpret the things his eyes can see. He may use his sense of sight in doing different things he wants. With his complete vision, he can read the newspaper and be aware of the things happening in the world, he can write stories and be able to share it with others, he can enjoy the entertainment the television offers and he can also observe the things he is witnessing everyday. Everyone can have their own reason for the importance of their sight.

Unfortunately for some instances many people are not equipped or blessed with a complete or normal vision. These persons are known to be disabled in some ways.

Wikipedia defines blindness as the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors. There are various scales developed to describe the extent of “blindness”. Total blindness is the complete lack of form and visual light perception and is clinically recorded as “NLP” or “no light perception”. However, blindness is frequently used to describe severe visual impairment with residual vision. “Light perception” on the other hand is having no more sight than the ability to tell light from the dark. Those persons with “light projection” can tell the general direction of a light source.

Visual impairment has variety of causes. It might be caused by disease and malnutrition. The World Health Organization estimates in 2002 the most common causes of blindness around the world are cataracts with 47.8 percent, uveitis with 10.2percent, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) with 8.7 percent, trachoma with 3.6 percent, corneal opacity with 5.12 percent and glaucoma with 12.3percent. Abnormalities and injuries, genetic defects, poisoning and willful actions are other causes of blindness.

According to the statistics of the Library for the Blind, there are half million blind people in the Philippines. some 80 percent of the statistics are visually impaired because of age- related cataracts and 40,000 are non-cataract blindness that are of school age.

People in developing countries like the Philippines are experiencing blindness as a consequence of treatable or preventable conditions. Vision impairment is common in people over 60 years old across all region and children in poorer communities are affected by blinding diseases than their affluent peers.

Aside from treatments, there are adaptive techniques of visually impaired and the blind people that allow them to complete their daily activities using their remaining senses. Adaptive computer and mobile phone software, allows people with visual impairments to interact with their computers/phones via screen readers of magnifiers. It is also possible to fold notes in different ways to assist recognition. Labeling and tagging clothing and other personal things also improves their way of living. Placing different types of food at different positions on a dinner plate and marking controls of household appliances can make their house activities easy. Thus most people who have been usually impaired for a long time devise their own adaptive strategies in all areas of personal and professional arrangement.

There are tools specially made for the blind. Enlarged or marked oven dials, talking watches, clocks, scales, calculators, compasses and other talking equipments are the common tools for them. But most visually impaired who are not totally blind read print, either of a regul
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