It is part of a national campaign aimed at raising awareness about the difficulties the visually impaired face on a day-to-day basis.

Jean Slane, vice-chairman of the organisation’s Scottish Central branch, met Mr Letford and Mike Galloway, director of Dundee City Council’s planning and trans-portation department and PC Graeme Waghorn of Tayside Police, to discuss these problems.

“We have problems with road junctions and objects obstructing the pavements,” explained Mrs Slane.

“Although they are putting audible signals on pedestrian crossings they are still not putting them on junctions and that is the most dangerous thing.

“There are advertising hoardings outside shops and there is rubbish put out in front of shops which can lie for hours before being collected, weeks if it is a holiday.

“There is also the age old problem of motorised things and cycles on the pavement. We are supposed to be more independent but it is not working, it’s just getting worse and worse,” Mrs Slane added.

“We had one lady who died as a result of being knocked down because she didn’t feel it was safe to use a crossing so went round the corner to what she thought was a small road.

“We wouldn’t wish it on anybody but until your eyesight is impaired you don’t realise the difficulties of everyday life.”

Mrs Slane added that she hoped that in the future, city planners would take into account more the plight of the partially sighted.

“Even in the city square it can be difficult as everything is in grey and when you get grey on grey it becomes difficult to see.”

Lord Provost John Letford said he hoped more would be done to help the visually impaired, but that ordinary people could also help to make life easier for them.

“The visually impaired have been having great difficulty in getting their message across,” he said.

“People need a bit of understanding. As a councillor, I get a lot of complaints from able-bodied people about things blocking the pavement, like wheelie bins, that are easily moved but the visually impaired must face things like these every day.

“It doesn’t take long for people to put things like wheelie bins away and, if they do that, if can make life a lot easier for the visually impaired,” he added.

n Dundee West MSP Kate Maclean has called on the Scottish Parliament to do more to prevent hundreds of people losing their eyesight every year.

According to the Royal National Institute for the Blind Scotland, and the Macular Disease Society, 650 people a year contract the Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in people over 50.

Ms Maclean has tabled a motion calling on the Scottish Executive to provide funding to ensure the only effective treatment for the condition — photo dynamic therapy (PDT) — is made available across the country.

Already over 40 MSPs — including Dundee East MSP Shona Robison — have given their support to the motion.

The cost of PDT is £6000 per patient compared to £10,000 a year in benefit, community-care services and lost productivity when someone loses their sight.