Guidance

Registering vision impairment as a disability

Certificate of Vision Impairment (CVI) form and Referral of Vision Impairment (RVI) letter template for consultant ophthalmologists and hospital eye clinic staff.

Applies to England

Documents

Details

The CVI form is issued to a patient assessed by a consultant ophthalmologist as being visually impaired. Please only use the current version. You should throw away any old stocks of earlier versions of the CVI.

The explanatory notes for ophthalmologists and hospital eye clinic staff explain how to complete and use the CVI form.

Ophthalmologists should give a copy of the CVI form to the patient in whichever format is most accessible to them. The plain text version may work better with patients’ screen readers. The large font version of the CVI form cannot be completed on screen.

The Referral of Vision Impairment (RVI) letter template is for hospital eye clinics to use before a CVI is needed, or where the patient has declined registration but wants advice about the difficulties caused by loss of vision.

The easy read letter template can be used with the completed CVI form.

If you have any comments about using the form please email ddu@dhsc.gov.uk.

Published 9 January 2013
Last updated 19 November 2018 + show all updates
  1. Replaced the pdf of the Certificate of Vision Impairment form with a version that can be completed on screen. Added OpenDocument Text version of the form.

  2. Updated CVI form and explanatory notes. Added easy read letter, plain text version of the CVI form and large font version of the CVI form.

  3. First published.