Impaired Vision Experience

As a part of the reuse train depot project we conducted an impaired vision experience to understand how it feels to have diminished vision. This was a great way to help experience how life is lived with impaired vision we were able to comprehend what our client goes through daily. For this experience I read the newspaper while holding a bag, this is considered 20/60 vision, I was only able to read the newspaper when it was about six inches away from my face but it was also blurry. I then folded the bag in half which considered legally blind, I was only able to see colors, shapes, outlines, bright lights, and I could make out objects about a foot in front of me. By using the vision simulator tool I experienced the views of a person with central vision loss, loss of parts of visual field, and tunnel vision. While looking through the central vision loss I could notice everything pretty clear expect the middle, loss of parts of visual field made my sight foggy, not whole, and parted, and tunnel vision was very narrow I wasn’t able to see what was on the side of me. The main purpose of this experiment was to do every day activities with impaired vision, my task was to wear simulated glass and walk into the book store on campus use the elevator, ATM machine, and walk up and down the stairs. From these activities using the elevator was the easiest because the elevator does were contrasted to a red wall and they had indications on the buttons. The hardest part was using the ATM because of the lack of indications the buttons were hard to see and I had to get really close to read the directions for the ATM. The stairs that lead to Holland-Terrell Library used contrast on the steps it was not easy going up and down them but they were not too difficult to handle.  With the glasses on many objects looked like big blobs and people looked like moving ovals. I enjoyed this experiment because now I am able to use what I learned to add into my universal design for the train depot.