A nightmare in a ‘darker’ world: persons with blindness under the Sri Lanka’s COVID-19 shutdown

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all wakes of lives in many countries including Sri Lanka, an island nation in the South Asian region. Among severely hit community groups due to COVID-19 have been the persons with visual impairment and blindness, who represent the majority of disabled people. Taking into consideration that the persons with disabilities generally fall into poverty-stricken cluster of the population and Sri Lanka has been passing turbulent times even prior to COVID-19, this paper argues that the people with visual impairment and blindness have been pushed from bad to worse, due to the shocks of COVID-19 strike.