An insight into the visually impaired: improving design guidelines for designers

An increase in visual impairment (VI) will accompany the rapidly ageing demographic. An inappropriately designed environment is disabling, making visually impaired people (VIP) feel frustrated and emphasising the difference between sighted and non-sighted people. This leads not only to physical navigation problems but also to psychological issues with a loss of independence and feelings of isolation. Most VIP are not totally blind and still retain some residual sight. Our research has established that visual capabilities and coping strategies vary not only with age but when and how VI occurred. Although current research in this field has demonstrated a notable use of lighting and colour design to acknowledge residual vision and use of senses other than vision, existing tools and guidelines do not help designers to fully understand the complexity of VI issues and different coping strategies. For example, simulation glasses, which help designers to understand some aspects of vision loss do not help designers understand how to exploit other attributes which VIP have developed. Describing and categorising of these diverse abilities may offer designers more scope when they design the built environment, e.g., a VI child may use body-centred coding strategies when in a small space; working aged adults may cope with VI by becoming more outgoing, relying more on other senses; passive, interpersonal, and emotional-focused coping strategies are used among those with VI in old age. This research aims to develop a deeper understanding of the varied nature of the VIP’s coping strategies. The paper illustrates the emergence of a matrix derived from a review of literature and guidelines and its potential to be used as the basis for developing improved guidelines to assist designers to distinguish different types of VI problems that people may have, and to better exploit these coping strategies in their designs