Beyond Vision is a mobile app designed for visually impaired persons
to demonstrate their skills in the form of a digital portfolio to showcase
their abilities to potential employers.

Many individuals with visual impairment face barriers to meaningful employment. Legislation has been put in place to ensure employment equity, however, little is known about the employment profile and experiences of people with seeing disabilities. Following were the identified barriers that prevented them from working.

01

Too few jobs available (20%)

02

Inadequate training/
experience (19%)

03

Past attempts at finding employment were unsuccessful (19%)

To refine my problem space and define the demographic, I decided to focus on working-age adults as they were the most affected.

Lower employment rates for individuals with visual impairment, and the work participation disparity with the “abled” community, have been attributed to several barriers.

01

Physical Barriers
Lack of accessible buildings and workplace. Lack of transportation, reliable commuting options and signages.

02

Procedural Barriers
Inaccessible or insensitive hiring processes. Lack of transparency in communication and in workplace accommodation.

03

Attitudinal Barriers
Assumptions, beliefs, stigma and stereotypes about persons with disabilities. The use of assistive aids leads to negative evaluation of intelligence, appearance and achievement.

The goal of my investigation is to learn about barriers to employment among partially blind persons and how it affects them.

To narrow down my scope I decided to focus on the demographic of ‘partially blind’ as it encompasses a wider range of the visually impaired persons. I believe having a universal approach will have the maximum impact on the problem space.

Ultimately, my project aims to make it convenient for partially blind persons to find and have access to meaningful employment opportunities.

My focus was to cater to the demographic of ‘partially blind’ as it encompasses a wider range of spectrum between Normal Vision and Total Blindness.

Methods like visual impairment simulation helps to understand the user, how they see the world and their challenges. This section of the society is vastly ignored in the technological advancements of our times, making digital products highly inaccessible.

Persons who are diagnosed with visual impairment at a later stage in life often do not have relevant help or guidance to navigate through obstacles. Two key assumptions based on secondary research were that educated visually impaired persons are well versed with a smart phone and are motivated in learning and working.

6 key themes emerged which helped to validate the importance of my problem space. Further, their corresponding insights helped me craft a How Might We question, thus narrowing down my scope of work.

I decided to focus on ‘Resistance’ as it has the most potential to address the problem space instead of just its symptoms.

01

Digital Accessibility + Literacy

Requires to be more inclusive to accommodate most forms of visual impairment.

02

Emotional + Mental Health

There is a significant sense of loss which includes loss of identity, opportunity resulting in low self-esteem.

03

Specialized Education

Specialized education and over-qualification is required to compensate for visual deficits.

04

Tutoring + Mentorship

Tutoring and mentorship is essential however, it is not always available.

05

Physical Barriers

Although steps are taken by building code guidelines, community mobility is still a significant concern.

06

Resistance

Employers do not have the assurance and confidence that a visually impaired person can execute the job at hand.

I developed a persona which was used to ensure my design solution was anchored by my target user's goals and needs. Further to that, their experience journey was mapped to better understand the stages in which an intervention might be warranted.

Jorge Borges, 36, lives together with his wife and two children in Canada. He has studied English and Spanish at university level and is currently unemployed. He has color blindness & loss of peripheral vision since 6 years and has struggled to find meaningful employment opportunities. He wants to have access to the same job opportunities like his sighted peers.

I started by tracing Jorge’s journey as he navigates through the labyrinth of employment being a visually impaired person.

He starts of being excited for his work application but ends up in disappointment as employers reject his application without a clear explanation.

Having carefully listened to all the feedback during the interview sessions, a large majority of visually impaired persons wanted to demonstrate their skills so that they are able to showcase their abilities to potential employers. A simple 3-step user flow was created to generate an efficient task flow.

During the initial sketching phase, 4 key screens were conceptualized and developed that would become the backbone of the app.

1. Type of Visual Impairment
2. Type of Employment & Assistive Technology
3. Project Portfolio
4. Uploading Work Samples

Solution sketches were developed into Lo-Fi grayscale wireframes to understand the usability of the app. This was an important step as the app started to get its form and purpose clearly laid out. I used a large and bold typeface to better align with my user group. 3 key features of the app were,

1. Screen should calibrate and adjust itself based on the user's visual requirements for components such as font size, colors and contrast.
2. Clear form with minimal and relevant information.
3. Voice feature to minimize typing if necessary.

Participants were given a scenario to further evaluate the usability of the app. The main task was to create and share their accessible multimedia portfolio with job networking sites.

Feedback received from user testing was dominant on the intuitiveness of the iconography used and their location. Some users felt that the location of icons, their meaning can be better explained. Further to this, a confirmation screen was missing, which could indicate that the process of sharing the portfolio was complete. These changes were incorporated to further improve the usability of the app.

I used brand adjectives to guide me as I charted through different brand possibilities and options. The explored names were tested with intended users to access their initial response.

I was looking for inspiration from some of the instances occurring in natural phenomena such as reflection, mirage, mist, fog, haze, smoke, blur, bokeh etc. These elements often have great presence of atmosphere, light and darkness in balance.

The pop of color is vibrant and uplifting, going with the overall tone of the app as suggested in the keywords previously. Colors were extracted from the moodboard to develop visual tonality and was tested for accessibility requirements.

Beyond Vision is brand that focuses on accessibility as the user group are visually impaired persons. The final color palette went through accessibility checks, and the following color combinations were selected for the final design.

Accessibility checking tools such as ‘Adobe Accessibility Contrast Checker, GitHub Accessible Color Palette Builder, Stark Contrast Checker (Figma), Web Accessibility In Mind’ were used to check legibility of the app. This was to ensure that the brand colors matched accessibility contrast considerations and met the requirements of the WCAG AA2.1 Accessibility Standards.

Designed by the Braille Institute and Applied Design Works, Atkinson Hyperlegible, named after the founder of the Braille Institute, has been developed specifically to increase legibility for readers with low vision, and to improve comprehension.

Why ‘Atkinson Hyperlegible’?

Having a traditional grotesque sans-serif at its core, it departs from tradition to incorporate unambiguous, distinctive elements—and at times, unexpected forms—always with the goal of increasing character recognition and ultimately improve reading. Atkinson Hyperlegible helps visually impaired persons - recognize footprints, differentiate letterforms and understand ambiguous characters.

Responsive marketing website for web and mobile that could be used
to draw people in to download the app.

As many as 8 in 10 Canadians have never worked with someone who is blind or partially sighted. Sensitizing the sighted persons is also a necessity for any solution to work.

Many accessibility solutions out there are either too prescriptive (making it seem like a checklist), too aspirational (painting a utopian picture that doesn’t drive action), or too charity-driven (driving the point that people with visual disabilities are to be pitied)

01

Testing the app with more than 50 users to understand how persons with different visual impairments interact with the app and the challenges they face.