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

Motivational Characteristics

You already know these things because you’ve already agreed pretty much on what motivational characteristics are:

• Low vision makes us more dependent on our environment (slide 3)

• Aging does the same as we compensate for increasing frailty and sensory loss (slide 3).

• Low Vision Characteristics (slide 4):

  • Need more light.

  • More sensitive to glare.

  • Slower to adapt to different light levels.

  • Function better with high contrast on surfaces and tasks.

• Good Lighting (slide 5).

  • Light levels adequate for the visual task.

  • Fixture design to promote glare reduction or elimination.

  • Fixtures placement to avoid direct & reflected glare, and shadows.

  • Light levels that are fairly uniform while still providing areas of interest.

[For example,] when we talk about defining edges of things: white is a better definer of an edge than a dark color.

One reason I feel that way is one of the first facilities that I was involved with was an assisted-living community, and there was an Alzheimer’s area.

What they would do is sometimes, in front of a doorway, there would be a cutout in the carpet and there would be a black circle there. It’s because Alzheimer’s patients wander continuously. A lot of them move all the time. And they were wandering into these spaces and taking things. So if they [staff] put a black circle in the carpet, and even though it wasn’t huge, they [patients] thought it was a hole, and they wouldn’t cross that area.

[Also the patients] had bracelets, but they could still go out [of] the doors and then we’d have to find them. So [staff] would put stripes on a flat area near the doors. [The patients] would think there were steps [at the area] and they couldn’t take their wheelchair out there or they were afraid to navigate them.

So black is not a color I’d use if I’m trying to help people get somewhere, because I know it’s a color that is used to prevent people from going places.