AWARD YEAR
2017
CATEGORY
Play & Learning
GOALS
Trust, Tolerance & Empathy
KEYWORDS
Simulation tool, Visually Impaired, Inclusive design
COUNTRY
Denmark
DESIGNED BY
Helle Vedø, Ballast CPH
Christine Svensson, Ballast CPH
Michala Mathiesen, Ballast CPH
WEBSITE
https://www.ballastcph.dk
Perspectacles Vision Simulators
Improving accessibility by visualizing low vision through low-tech simulation goggles.
246 million people in the world live with low or no vision. When we build schools, design workplaces, arrange social activities, and develop new products and services we forget that so many people rely on other senses than their vision alone. What it means to have tunnel vision, dark spots or maybe to have lost the central visual field is hard for sighted people to understand. Perspectacles show what cannot be explained. It is a low tech simulation tool that shows what each eye disease does to the vision. The concept consists of a basic goggle and specially developed adhesive filters designed with users and optometrists and approved by The Institute for the Blind and Partially Sighted (IBOS) in Denmark. Perspectacles give people with low vision a way to explain their needs so that sighted people can better understand partial sightedness. Perspectacles thereby educate private individuals as well as professionals in how to reduce barriers to empower people with low vision.