‘So would you say I’m blind?’ Sam asked.This sounds like a straightforward question. Sam had been attending my low vision clinic for six years, so surely I would be able to answer her without a second thought?Sam had an eye condition called Stargardt disease, which was slowly causing the cells in the central part of her retina to stop working. Just after starting high school when she was 11, she had found it difficult to see the whiteboard in some of her classrooms. Assuming she needed an eye test, her parents took her to a local optometrist who prescribed spectacles, but they didn’t seem to make much difference to her sight. Her family realised there was something seriously wrong when Sam asked for the ketchup bottle to be passed, not seeing that it was right in front of her. A trip to her doctor led to a referral to an eye hospital, blood tests, scans, photographs and the unwelcome news that she had a serious, inherited and generally untreatable eye disease.