Proceedings of: Workshop on Improving Building Design for Persons with Low Vision

Energy utilization, short-term and long-term

Comment and Questions by Cheri Wiggs: Just so I’m going along that point of forward thinking, because I have been thinking about this all along. This kind of guidance is going to help the general population, right. It’s not just a select group but it’s going to be all of us. So it’s wise to take this into account. All of us should be interested in this going forward.

I think I’m going to piggyback on a point that Marsha made earlier that really did resonate with me. I might sound a little contrarian, but this whole notion of the energy regulation, I’ve been hearing how difficult it’s going to make everything. But it is important.

I mean, it really is important for us to get a handle on how much energy we’re using. We’ve got a lot of intelligence in the room where we could say ‘look, this is going to happen and how much light we’re using is going to decrease and if that’s the case, it’s going to be difficult for all of us.’

Can we use this kind of intelligence to use smarter lighting? If they’re saying we can’t use as much, can we get some guidance here in terms of [how] this is going to be difficult? [Are there] ways you could do this in terms of paint colors? Where again, it’s going to be [for] all of us because we’re all going to be in a situation where the lighting is lower.

So it’s really thinking forward and it’s really attaching to what’s happening now. I’m not speaking as NIH here. I’m speaking as somebody who’s sort of been listening to the discussion here and I don’t know if that makes sense. But I also think it’s a lot more palatable if people [understand that] we’re not trying to fight against this. We know this is going to happen. But we could have some smart ways of dealing with this.

Response by [Participant]: We have taken action in that with the photoluminescence and setbacks on the lighting through service lighting systems for stairwells that glow 50 percent and, as soon as there’s motion, they’ll go up to 100 percent. So we’ve already done those types of things.