If a person with Usher marries another deaf person, the latter should be tested to see if they have the condition, albeit mildly. A child who is identified as being at high risk for Usher syndrome should be referred immediately to an ophthalmological clinic which has the capacity for full diagnostic testing. By the age of 20 most deaf people will be in training or already employed. Those who have RP may well be doing work which will eventually prove difficult or even dangerous to carry out. The rate at which vision will degenerate over the third decade of life is difficult to predict, there is therefore a question about when to change course.
Most deaf people have a negative attitude towards blindness.
For very understandable reasons deaf people universally feel the worst possible handicap that can befall a human being is blindness. Ironically, blind people feel the same way about deafness. Vernon's apt words embody the dilemma which affects those who are both deaf and blind. As the deaf person contemplates the future with RP he or she is already leaving the world of the deaf and entering the world of the blind, yet neither world wants to know him. Contrary to popular opinion, people with one disability are not predisposed to being sympathetic and understanding towards those with a different condition from their own.