The Bigger Picture Consultation Event

Magnifier Consultation around the table

During the Action For Blind People (West Midlands) Information Day, LOOK together with the Low Vision Group for VISION 2020 ran the first of its kind consultation event entitled ‘The Bigger Picture’ for children and young people with low vision across the country. For this activity the organisations involved ‘Playtrain’ (a leading children’s consultation and research organisation) to discover what children and young people want in their magnifiers and low vision aids (LVA’s).

Traditionally magnifiers and low vision aids have been made with the older generation in mind, their design is often clinical and a style that does not consider the thoughts and feelings of children and young people.

‘The Bigger Picture’ provided an opportunity for children and young people to creatively make comment on the style and usefulness of both magnifiers and low vision aids provided on the market and their own personal LVA’s.  They were also invited to invent their own stylish magnifiers with consideration to packaging.

All this information was collated and will be produced in a report in order to send on to manufactures across the country all in support of VISION 2020. We hope to be able to carry out this study on a wider scale and other like it in the future.

As an added bonus optometrists were on hand to access children’s needs and support them to discover new LVA’s. Such information was then fed back to the children’s own eye specialists at home, ensuring that the day has a lasting impact for the children and young people in more ways than one.