Wayfinding Technologies for Older Adults with Visual Impairments: Ideas for Future Directions:

We live in an era when technological advances are being developed at an exponential pace. The so-called tech boom is affecting all aspects of life from redefining social interaction to physical activity and health outcomes. It should be no surprise that older adults are an important part of the technological revolution since they represent a sizable and growing section of the world's population. As older adults of the present generation expect a longer lifespan, which increasingly includes some experience with visual impairment, technology increases the potential of remaining healthy and active for as long as possible. Technology in the area of wayfinding represents an important element of the overall strategy to achieve this goal. Advances in assistive technologies for wayfinding are increasingly being used to facilitate the mobility, independence, and safety of older adults with visual impairments. Technology does not, however, come without risks. Technology for technology's sake may be a false panacea for very real difficulties. Visual disability and its effect on quality of life require that it be addressed in a transdisciplinary approach since it is a significantly complex problem. The way technology is developed depends on many stakeholders who very often have different goals and methods. The needs of industrial developers and investors to produce products that can be sold at a profit and brought to the market expeditiously are not necessarily in accord with those who have different time lines such as the clinicians and academics conducting research and the individuals who will ultimately be using the technology. FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT Although various assistive wayfinding technologies are already being developed and applied to improve the mobility of visually impaired older adults, few are being developed with this specific population in mind. Although many of these technologies appear to be relevant to older adults, they very rarely explicitly target the design and testing to this specific subgroup of the population. To address some of these concerns, we propose several future directions for the development of wayfinding technology for visually impaired people, especially older adults. Evaluation and assessment Evaluation and assessment of technology needs to play an integral part in the development of wayfinding applications for older people with vision loss. Although the time lines of developers, researchers, and service providers may not be synchronous, it is very important that the effectiveness and efficiency claims for technologies are substantiated using accepted practice-based methods. Dissemination and adoption of technologies should not depend only on marketing, especially where health effects are claimed or suggested. An example is the project for the development of accessible pedestrian signals. In three related papers, Scott and colleagues (2008) and Barlow and colleagues (2009, 2013) discuss the use of optimized accessible pedestrian signals in several urban locations including the cities of Portland, Oregon, Alpharetta, Georgia, and Austin, Texas. Each city had very different crosswalk designs, and the authors were able to improve various measures of crossings by blind pedestrians with the installation of accessible pedestrian signals and various other innovative device features. The use of bar tiles on the crosswalk was also tested. Barlow and colleagues suggested that "[p]rototype beaconing APS or tactile guidestrips should be considered as options for making challenging crossings accessible to pedestrians with visual impairments" (Barlow et al., 2013, p. 153). The measures they describe include the time it takes a person to cross a street and the accuracy of the crossing path. Measureable outcomes Although these measures are what a designer of this technology can easily quantify, a public health professional would want to ask questions regarding the short-, middle-, and long-term outcomes for the changes that the technology produces. …