This protocol presents the development of a study that seeks to understand the barriers to accessing eye services, as perceived by patients (or their proxies) who have been referred to receive eye care but did not attend in the context of school and community-based screening programmes. We also seek to elicit potential interventions or service modifications that would have enabled non-attenders to receive the care they need.

We will conduct interviews with a purposive sample of non-attenders or their proxies, selected to include people with the sociodemographic characteristics that are most strongly associated with non-attendance. We have used the Levesque and Obrist frameworks to develop a bespoke a priori deductive coding tool for use by programme implementers. Space will be made for the inductive identification of barriers that are not necessarily captured in the framework. Community representatives will assist with analysis and interpretation.

The findings from each country will be shared with the leaders of each respective programme and we will lead a focus group discussion in each country to identify the most promising solutions. Further work will implement and evaluate these solutions.