Exploring the Opportunities for Technologies to Enhance Quality of Life with People who have Experienced Vision Loss

Research predicts that 196 million people will be diagnosed with Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) by 2020. People who experience AMD and other vision loss face barriers that affect their Quality of Life (QoL). People experience only modest improvement from technologies (e.g., screen readers, CCTV), tools (e.g., magnifying glasses, tactile buttons), and human help (e.g., friends, blindness organizations). Further, there are issues to accessing these resources based on one's place of residence. To explore these challenges and determine design implications to support people who have experienced vision loss (PVL), we conducted a qualitative semi-structured interview study exploring QoL with 10 PVL. We uncovered themes of supporting creative work, recognizing the impact of one's living in a non-urban setting on QoL, and increasing efficiency at accomplishing tasks. We motivate the inclusion of PVL in the design process because they learned skills while sighted and are now low vision or blind.