Smart glasses offer promising possibilities for people with Cortical Visual Impairment, but how can we design them to truly meet their needs? Through an 8-month co-design study with adults with CVI, we explored how XR technology can support environmental perception and daily independence.
While smart glasses have been explored for ocular vision impairments, their application to CVI remained largely unexplored. CVI affects higher-order visual functions like object recognition, face perception, and visual attention - creating unique challenges that require different solutions.
We worked directly with two adults with CVI as co-designers throughout the research process. Using the Apple Vision Pro, we followed a structured approach:
Smart glasses can meaningfully support people with CVI through spatially embedded visual augmentations. Our co-designers found solutions helpful for:
Our research revealed important considerations for designing CVI-friendly technology:
CVI is the leading cause of childhood vision impairment in developed countries and is projected to become a major cause of adult vision impairment. This research provides the first evidence that XR smart glasses can address the unique challenges faced by people with CVI when understanding and interacting with their environment.
As XR technology rapidly advances, there's significant opportunity to develop assistive solutions that dramatically improve quality of life for the CVI community.