Attendance Allowance for sight loss: the help sighted people never notice

Yes - significant sight loss is exactly the kind of condition Attendance Allowance covers, and its claims have a particular shape: less about physical inability, more about safety, supervision and the many small pieces of help that sighted people never notice happening.

The help sighted people never notice

• Personal care - checking your appearance, matching clothes, spotting stains: the dressing question asks about choosing appropriate clothes, and the washing question about looking after your appearance. Needing another person's eyes for these is help.
• Medication - identifying the right box, reading labels and doses, eye drops that someone else must put in: all Q36 material, and a pharmacist-printed list plus dosette support is worth describing.
• Eating - identifying food on the plate is in the form's own wording; cutting safely, pouring hot drinks, knowing when something is off.
• Communication - the form asks directly about reading letters, filling in forms and replying to mail. If official post waits for a sighted visitor, say so - this very claim form is an example.
• Safety and supervision - trip hazards, stairs, cookers, unfamiliar objects left in familiar places; falls and stumbles counted at Q34; and the supervision question, including how long you can safely be left.
• Nights - darkness removes remaining useful vision for many people: night-time toilet trips, disorientation on waking, someone within call.

Registered or not, describe the function

Aids help the claim, not hurt it

Magnifiers, liquid level indicators, talking devices, bumpons, a symbol cane: list them at Q27, along with what still goes wrong even with them. Aids evidence the difficulty - and the gap between what aids fix and what only a person can do is where attention and supervision live.

Question by question: where sight loss lands on the AA1

• Question 31 (washing and appearance) - checking clothes are clean, make-up, shaving, the mirror that no longer reports back.
• Question 32 (dressing) - matching and choosing clothes is on the form by name: colours, stains, pairs.
• Question 33 (moving indoors) - unfamiliar spaces, steps without contrast, the layout that must never change.
• Question 34 (falls) - trips over the unseen: kerbs, pets, grandchildren's toys - dates and counts.
• Question 35 (meals) - pouring hot water, judging cooked from raw, finding food on the plate.
• Question 36 (medicines) - reading labels and doses; eye drops someone else must put in are one of the form's own examples.
• Question 37 (communication) - the section sight loss quietly dominates: reading letters and forms, dealing with bills, recognising who is speaking.
• Question 40 (supervision) - not being aware of common dangers, in the list verbatim.

Read against the full walkthrough, a sight-loss claim turns out to touch more questions than almost any other single condition.

Question 37 is your centre of gravity

The communication question asks about reading letters and dealing with forms - and for sight loss this is not a corner of the claim but its centre. Every bill checked by a daughter, every hospital letter read aloud over the phone, every form (including this one) that requires another person's eyes: that is attention with bodily functions in the case-law sense, arriving several times a week for life. Say who does it, how often, and what has gone wrong when help was not there - the missed appointment from the unread letter is one dated sentence of perfect evidence. If a friend or family member is completing the AA1 itself for you, that fact belongs on the form too, in exactly these terms.

Darkness moves the goalposts - use the night section

Most sight loss worsens when the lights go down, and the form's day/night split works in your favour if you let it. The landing that is navigable at noon becomes hazardous at 2am; the bathroom trip needs a person, not a torch; drops or medication at night need other hands. Question 42 wants each need in times per night and minutes; question 44 asks about someone staying awake to watch over you, which in sight-loss households often looks like a spouse who wakes at every movement because the last solo night trip ended at the bottom of the stairs. Fill these in honestly and the higher rate stops being a stranger's category and starts being a description of your house at night.

Registration, the CVI and evidence

If you are certified (the CVI - Certificate of Vision Impairment), enclose a copy: question 65's enclosure list names it, and it is the cleanest single document a sight-loss claim can carry. But registration is not a requirement - plenty of real claims rest on macular degeneration or glaucoma that has not reached certification, and the form judges function, not certificates. Alongside whatever paperwork exists, the strongest evidence is the specific: the last three trips, the burn from the kettle, the medication mix-up, who reads the post and when. An eye clinic letter and a GP note that reflects daily function complete the picture; a fortnight of the diary, kept by whoever lends their eyes, supplies the dates.

The given-up column, and what the award buys back

Question 39 asks about activities at home and out that you have given up or would like to do with help - and sight loss fills it painfully well: the reading, the driving, the church rota, the walks taken alone for fifty years. List them with the help that would restore them ("I would walk to the shops twice a week with a sighted guide"). Then note what an award actually does: £76.70 or £114.60 a week, tax-free and untouched by savings, which sight-loss households typically turn into taxis, readers, and paid help with the paperwork mountain - plus the Pension Credit addition where you live alone. The calculator totals it; the claim guide starts it with the date protected.

Falls, hazards and the supervision route

Sight loss earns the supervision route more often than people expect, because its dangers are the unseen kind: the kerb misjudged, the stair edge without contrast, the pan handle turned outward, the medication bottles that look identical. Question 34 wants the falls and trips in numbers - month, year, last one, injuries, whether you can get up - and question 40's reason list includes "not aware of common dangers" in so many words, followed by the safe-alone question that deserves a truthful answer shaped by the last incident, not by pride. Question 27's aids table rounds out the picture: the white cane, the talking clock and liquid-level indicator, the stair rail - and the third column for what each cannot do, which is why a person is still needed. The full logic of danger-based claims is in falls and supervision.

The household arithmetic

The award is £76.70 or £114.60 a week - £3,988.40 to £5,959.20 a year - tax-free, with savings and income ignored, and it qualifies you for the Pension Credit severe disability addition where you live alone, which sight loss households do more often than most. The money is unrestricted; in practice it becomes taxis, a reader for the paperwork, extra help in the house, and the technology that eyes used to make unnecessary. If a family member has become your regular guide and reader, the carer's guide is worth their ten minutes - including the claiming trap to check before they do anything generous. The calculator adds your own numbers up.

Describe the seeing you actually have

Answer every question as the person you are with the correction you actually wear - glasses on, magnifier in hand - not as a hypothetical best case or a dramatised worst. If the central vision is gone but edges remain, say what that mix does in real rooms: faces unrecognised at ten feet, print impossible but shapes navigable, good light workable and dusk dangerous. Specific beats severe-sounding every time, because the decision maker needs to picture your kitchen, not grade your eyes - the clinic letters you enclose will carry the measurements.

Starting the claim without being able to read the form

The practical irony of a sight-loss claim - a 30-page printed form - has practical answers. Ring 0800 731 0122 and the date of the call protects your claim date while a family member, a friend or our service does the writing inside the 6-week window; the online route works with screen readers; and the person who lends you their eyes for the paperwork belongs on the form at question 18 as exactly the help they are. The claiming guide covers each route step by step.

The last word is the first rule: the decision maker cannot see your kitchen, your stairs or your post pile - they can only read. Put the seeing they need onto the page, and the claim will stand on it.

Claim promptly, describe precisely, and let the award buy back some of what the eyes have been costing.

Common questions