Blind Experience

I don't have any pictures describing this posting, but I think the one above works perfectly to illustrate what I experienced. At the start of the semester, a partner and I took turns walking around the WSU bookstore wearing a pair of sunglasses with the lenses covered in Vaseline to simulate the visual/tactile experiences of someone who is blind/ partially blind. Since we are designing a hotel who's manager is legally blind, this was a great thing for us to do. Looking through the glasses was very similar to the picture above, where most object were fuzzy blurs, and the source of light indistinguishable. My partner led me around the store, up and down stairs and I was able to attempt to use things such as an ATM, or elevator buttons with limited visibility. It was challenging, and it made me nervous because I had to rely on someone else to get where I wanted to go. This experience was fun, and it gave me a deeper interest in wanting to learn how to design spaces for people with vision problems. It is something I definitely don't quite understand yet, but doing this allowed me to "see" firsthand some of the problems people with this disability encounter, which in turn helps me design better spaces that help make this problem less significant.