Visual impairment can have a significant impact on the person's quality of life. As a designer my responsibility is to have an understanding of people whose background, education and culture may be different from my own. Gaining insight into a user's emotions, aspirations and fears can provide inspiration to create a more balanced functional design. To achieve a greater awareness and sensitivity to a client who is visually impaired I participated in a vision disability ability workshop. The workshop definitely heightened my awareness of how people with differing physical abilities experience the built environment. In groups of two we were given a route to walk while wearing a pair of sunglasses that were obstructed. The minute I put the sunglasses on I had a great sense of fear, I immediately took my partners arm for fear of running into something or falling down stairs. A few things I noticed on my route were the contrasting colors helped in determining where I was, upon reaching the elevator I could not see the panel of buttons because of the glare of light and color on the wall. Another not so easy task was walking down stairs, if there is not contrast it is very difficult to determine depth, but going up stairs seemed much easier, I think this may have been due to a shadow at the base of each tread. This time of the year the weather can play a significant role in the mobility of someone that is visually impaired. Not only is the glare from the snow and puddles but the wear of the paint markings that are normally visible for guidance is worn off making it extremely difficult. Rather than aiming to design for the ideal user, I am going to try to focus on using a universal design approach.
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