 |
| Attempting to read through 4 layers of plastic |
 |
| The effect of petroleum jelly smeared on the inside of sunglasses |
 |
| Attempting to find the keypad and card-swipe at the ATM |
-Looking through two layers of plastic bag made my vision blurry. I could make out the images with some shape within the picture and the title came in legible. The text of the articles was illegible.
-Looking through four layers of plastic bag made my vision more blurry. I could make out the general shape of the newspaper and I could recognize the shape of the images, but the titles and article text was illegible.
-The varying degrees of vision impairment tended to be very frustrating because parts of my field of vision were blocked. I need to constantly repositioning my head to gather all the information from the newspaper and my surrounding environment. The simulation of complete blindness was completely frustrating within seconds. It is important to remember that a person that is blind must feel a great amount of irritation and the last thing they need is a built environment that doesn’t relieve their physical burden.
-The exercise wearing the sunglasses with petroleum jelly, was, well, gross, but I forged ahead.
I stood in front of the elevator and found that the buttons were easy to see, but once in the elevator the lighting was so dim I couldn’t make out the buttons as they were the same steel as the panel; fashionable, but completely unhelpful.
-Still walking around wasn’t terribly difficult because the ripples in the jelly created a prismatic effect which enabled me to guide myself down a hallway.
-At the ATM machine I was able to navigate the keypad because the tactile texture of the keys changed from a braille symbol on each key to a central bump in the middle of the keypad. I did have difficulty finding the key swipe as it blended in with the rest of the machine and it wasn’t illuminated.
-The stairs down the atrium were tedious. I was unsteady and worried I would miss a step. The tread on the steps worked well to contrast, but with the jelly glasses the prismatic effect warped the contrast.
