Improving the understanding of the innate abilities and coping strategies of visually impaired people (VIP): An analysis and modelling of the variables and their spatial navigational abilities.

Supervisors: Professor Alastair Macdonald, Sally Stewart

Although current research into designing environments for Visually Impaired People (VIP) has demonstrated a notable use of lighting and colour design to acknowledge residual vision and make use of senses other than vision, existing tools and guidelines do not help designers to fully understand the complexity of visual impairment issues and the extent of VIP’s different coping strategies (CSs).

Rather than addressing their disabilities, this research intends to develop a deeper understanding of VIP’s innate capabilities and to establish the extent to which variables such as age, when and how visual impairment occurred, and the kinds of environments they encounter which can affect their use of CSs.

From a review of the literature a categorisation of VIP coping strategies used while navigating different categories of environments was developed, and used as the basis for a thematic analysis of VIP’s interview transcripts. This has helped reveal complex patterns and combinations of use of CSs by different VIP in different environments. The final stage of the study will involve interviewing designers to ascertain their knowledge about VIPs’ needs and their current approaches to designing environments for VIP.

Findings from this study will contribute to developing a better understanding of the varied nature of the visual impairment and coping strategies, which may offer designers more scope when they design the built environment.