Functional vision barriers: a new concept analized in terms of human visual performance

ELISA COLOMBO; BEATRIZ O´DONELL; JAVIER SANTILLÁN; LUIS ISSOLIO

Psychology and Neurosciences

Psychology and Neurosciences

Año: 2012 vol. 6 p. 219 - 226

1984-3054

In this work, we propose to introduce a new category of barriers that we have called "functional vision barriers". With this expression we refer to lighting and visual elements that may complicate or hinder functional vision, and which may make life even more difficult for people with visual defects. These barriers appear as a consequence of certain negative effects on people, caused either by a poor design of the visual stimulus or by the visual environment that surrounds it, where lighting is one of the main factors. We use the term ?functional vision? because this expression refers to the ability of the visual system to perform everyday tasks. To exemplify this proposal, we have analyzed some of our previous results that respond to situations that can be considered ?functional vision barriers?: 1) stimuli with low luminance contrast information, where the addition of chromatic contrast improves visual performance, and 2) tasks that are carried out in the presence of a glare source in the visual field, diminishing visual performance and reducing brightness perception.