Landing on the Idea

Oct. 17, 2020 (10.11.2020–10.17.2020)

Interview with Rebecca Fater (Executive Director of Marketing @ Perkins School for the Blind)

Notes

• Many people say that they have never encountered an individual with visual disabilities
• CVI (Cortical Visual Impairment) is the fastest growing cause of visual impairment in the United States. It is hard to get diagnosed with CVI, because of the lack of understanding, and children lose years of education because of this
• Perkins’ CVI NOW : website to educate people about CVI. There is also a facebook group for those families with approximately 600 members
• Bringing the visually impaired forefront and make them visible is important
• Blind New World (Christine found out about Perkins School through this website): Causes people to stop and think. According to the preliminary survey, majority of community have no idea, yet uncomfortable about the issue. Utilize social channels to have community of people with disabilities, how to get comfortable
• Better to ask questions, explore, take a risk
• Awkwardness of the topic; people are embarrassed to admit the ignorance, thinking “better not to say anything.” Yet, visually impaired people want people to admit where they are with their understanding of the visual impairments, and they are okay with people asking
• People with visual disabilities want to be part of solution
• Blindways: Due to the GPS limitation, people with visual impairment struggle to find the bus stops/buses. So this app invites sighted people to contribute clues about the bus stop.
• Many of the visually impaired want the sighted people to just ask, don’t be afraid (include me, put me in your focus group, on your design team, and so on)
• Post-interview materials we got (survey results of sighted people’s understanding/perspective about people with visual disabilities):

https://www.perkins.org/sites/default/files/blindnewworld-infographic.pdf

https://www.perkins.org/sites/default/files/perkins-americas-blind-spot-ebook.pdf

https://www.perkins.org/sites/default/files/blindnewworld-infographic.pdf

Landing on the idea

How do you motivate sighted people, who have little to no experience with people with visual disabilities, to want to learn to understand and empathize with people with visual disabilities?

Rebecca answered this question by referencing another project, BlindWays, that the school did in partnership with MBTA and massDOT with support from Google and the public transportation system in Boston.

The goal of this project was to answer the question “How do you find the bus stop if you’re blind?”. Using GPS technology only helps users navigate to within 30 feet of their destination. For blind people, this distance meant that they might miss the bus entirely. BlindWays encourages the sighted community to volunteer and contribute clues that reference permanent landmarks near the bus stop (tree, mailbox, etc.) via crowdsourcing. This way, blind people can verify if they are in the right spot. To promote this, Perkins utilized social media and advertisements with MBTA and massDOT to reach sighted people that are using public transportation.

Inspired by this project, our team wants to create a welcoming community experience with the aim of putting those with visual disabilities in front. So how do we include new neighbors that have visual disabilities in the Pittsburgh community?

Communities are shaped by the people, small businesses, schools, parks, events, etc (Tell the story of Pittsburgh). With developing neighborhoods that are bringing in a diverse range of people to the city of Pittsburgh, how do we make these communities more welcoming and accessible? Our team wants to challenge individuals to come together and describe where and what locations are via landmarks. Community gatherings, favorite restaurants, etc. — we want everything that makes these communities unique to be accessible to everyone. Once individuals have contributed, we’ll be able to nudge them to learn about the impact of their contribution and to learn more about people with visual disabilities.

This is just what we needed to motivate people to gain the knowledge they need :)

Note to ourselves: Read SF paper on accessibility (a medium post_

Stakeholder Map

We created a new version of the stakeholder map according to the new focus of stakeholders we have.

User Journey Map

We analyzed the user’s experience of being introduced to the campaign, using the product, and going forward after the experience. We analyzed the level of the user’s knowledge of visual impairments throughout the experience. At the end of the experience, the user will have a level of knowledge of understanding and empathy.

Participatory

To find out the level of sense of community in Pittsburgh, we created a digital forum for people to share what the Pittsburgh community means to them and what kind of community they want to see it become. We also gave them the option to sign their name and to let us know how long they have lived in Pittsburgh.

Visual Considerations

• Accessibility guidelines for colors/text in design
• Bright, high contrast colors to improve readability for low vision
• Visual blindness: avoid certain color combinations that are hard to distinguish
• [digital] Do not put images behind text as it’s difficult for screen readers to pick up
• Clear, sans-serif fonts
• Friendly, fun, welcoming
• We want to approach the subject without a judgmental attitude, but rather a learning experience made fun and welcoming