My Day With Low Vision - Brandon N.

For my assignment I decided to simulate a day in the life of someone with low vision. I am in a unique position for this assignment as I have a rare condition that causes me to have profound vision impairment (20/900) in only one of my eyes. Due to the fact that it is only in one of my eyes I have never truly experienced this impairment, even if I remove my glasses there is hardly any difference in my sight due to my better eye. I decided that in order to get a firsthand experience I completed the outing all while wearing an eye patch over my good eye. For my outing I simply went out to a restaurant with my girlfriend and then we watched a movie at home, yet even these simple tasks proved very challenging.

 

 There were many challenges with regards to accessibility right from the beginning. For starters, there is no way I would be able to drive myself anywhere, furthermore it was extremely difficult to give any sort of directions. I was unable to read any road signs during the day, and at night the lights of the other cars and signs blurred together, practically blinding me. This would also impact my privacy as I would be reliant one someone else at all times if I needed to travel anywhere and I would also have no way of knowing how I got there or how I could get back. Once we arrived at the restaurant, it was very busy and introduced the aspect of crowding. Normally, a restaurant being busy isn’t too much of a problem for me other than having to wait longer, but with vision impairment it was much more difficult. I found myself constantly having to get out of the way as we waited for a seat and bumping into things that I hadn’t noticed. Once we got a seat, I also experienced issues with sociality. Due to the fact that the restaurant was so busy, it was hard to hear during our conversation and without being able to accurately see the speaker’s lip movements, it made it all the more difficult to correctly determine what they were saying. While there I had anticipated that I would have issues with comfort in reading the menu. However, this restaurant also had a digital screen menu in addition to their regular menu. This screen was much easier for me to read, as it had larger font and was very brightly lit. While I do not believe that this was designed for those with low vision in mind, it certainly helped me complete my order.

 
        After the dinner we tried to watch a movie at home, however this proved to be very difficult

 

 as well. The movie provided very low sensory stimulation for someone with low vision; it was difficult for me most of the time to even know who was in the frame at a given time. While in this case I was still able to make out what was happening through my hearing, much of the meaning of the film that was not auditory such as facial cues and much of the action sequences were all but completely lost on me. While I was able to adapt the room by moving seating closer to the screen, it still was never quite clear enough to get the full experience of watching a movie. After changing the seating, I realized that I would have to adapt much more of my space to accommodate this disability. Clocks were too high up for me to read and I would be forced to make larger labels for much my food stuffs and other belongings. Overall, this assignment helped me understand some of the challenges that those with low vision face and I hope that through new technologies we can help mitigate this problem and accommodate for those in need.