Early adopters of emerging technology offer unique insights into the benefits and hurdles of using technology in daily life. We interviewed early adopters of a head-mounted assistive device for low vision called eSight 2.0 and client-facing employees of the company that produced the device in order to better understand the ways that daily use of the technology can help us understand social implications of digitally enhanced vision. These interviews probed personal and professional experiences for social and emotional impacts associated with adoption of this type of low-vision assistive technology. From our interviews, four themes emerged: 1) assessing the value of assistive technology in real life, 2) negotiating social engagement, 3) boundaries of sight, and 4) attitudes toward and expectations of technology. We introduce the concept of multiplicities of vision to highlight that sight is not one thing for all people in all situations. We argue that individuals with low vision who use assistive technology have skilled vision that is neither fully-human nor fully-digital, but rather, assembled through a combination of social and technical affordances. We propose that instead of seeing low-vision users through a deficit model of sight, human-computer interaction designers have more to gain by viewing people with low vision as individuals with expertise in skilled vision that is both socially and technologically mediated.

Read the full article from ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing.