Vision Simulation System for Development of Vision-Friendly Products for Elderly Persons

Abstract

Development of a method or a system to support design of vision-friendly products for elderly persons is desired because it is difficult for young designers to understand elderly person's difficulty of vision. For the requirement, a method to simulate elderly person's vision using computer graphics and image processing is proposed and a basic system based on the proposed method is constructed. The system has the models of accommodation ability characteristics, optical characteristics of the crystal lens of human eyes, spatial frequency characteristics, and focusing velocity characteristics which are the characteristics on aging-related changes of the human eye. The system can then simulate a blurred vision occurred by deficient accommodation power, optical absorption change, aging nerve change, and focusing time change. Sign marks, Landolt rings and antenna marks were shown elderly persons as experimental samples, and the answers for visibility of these samples were obtained. The answer of elderly persons and simulation results were compared. As the result, the usefulness of the system was confirmed.