1 min read
How Losing My Sight Made Me a Better Designer
The design world is woefully deficient in creating positive, equal experiences for people with disabilities. A personal account of vision loss and what it taught me about design.
I bent over one day and like ink swirling into a glass of water, there it was. A coil of thick, pulsing threats. I didn't know what it was saying to me, but I knew it was menacing. It's been three years since a retinal specialist told me I had degenerative retinal disease.
Designing with one eye in 2D is actually not hard. It's all the stuff around it that accompanies vision loss. It's the depth-perception loss, people assuming you can see them and giving way, being snuck up on accidentally 100 times a day. The fear is the worst. After six surgeries on the right eye, you start to lose hope that you will see for much longer.
The problem is the lack of parity in the usability and context of experience for able people and for people using assistive technology.
