Reid My Mind Radio – The Fashion Passion
In this latest production for Gatewave Radio, we learn about someone interested in addressing the challenges faced by those with vision loss when it comes to fashion.
This entrepreneurial design student with the “Fashion Passion” wants to help create “fashion Accessibility.”
She’s looking for input…
Take a listen and then send her some input…
When I saw the request to help–as a member of the NASA visually impaired and blind community–mu first thought was that the problem is at the retail level with the stores and catalogues. My second thought was,in parallel with the broadcast, the value of an integrated line iwth colors, patterns and cut that all goes together. My disability is low vision–I simply do not see very well. I have some new magnification tools that help for seeing the label and price tag. On a small scale, it would be interesting if somone designed a tag that was extremely useful and worked well with a SNOW, Pebble or similar hand-held electronic magnifier. with basic information –size, color family and price. I believe some of the magnifiers have speech as well so useful for the blind. My exerience is that if you make printed material more accessible to those with vision problems that everyone wins.
Although not a “total”– I think the touch idea is a good one.
I can remember bying things at Marks and Spencer when I was in London, maybe once a year, and I did not have to worry about things matching. The colors went together. A neutral pallet in, for example greys or beige, can be used with so many colors. Low vision, means that I need good sunlight and I appreciate in my current black and white working wardrobe that a few bright or soft prints or stripes can make an outfit that makes me feel good.
Hi Anne and Reid, I’m a Human-Centered Computing PhD student at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and when I started my program I did a few years of research into accessible fashion for the blind. Many of the challenges Reid stated and findings Anne has found in her interviews are right in line with the items I found and I ended up categorizing the types of questions people have into 2 categories: objective (such as color and care instructions) and subjective (such as matching and appropriateness). I have a few research papers that first itemize the issues found and then explore 2 technology solutions – using low and hi-tech solutions for objective questions and using crowdsourcing for the subjective questions. I’ve included the paper titles below and many are linked from my website if it’s helpful to you. While I don’t do this research any longer currently I did hope to get back to it one day so it’s good to see others are also championing this change. Good luck and let me know if I can be of more assistance!
Research papers:
“Preliminary Investigation of the Limitations Fashion Presents to Those with Vision Impairments”
“Making Fashion Accessible for People with Vision Impairments”
“Designing an accessible clothing tag system for people with vision impairments”
“Crowdsourcing Subjective Fashion Advice Using VizWiz: Challenges and Opportunities”