Perspectives on home safety: do home safety assessments address the concerns of clients with vision loss?

Purpose: We explored the occupational performance and home safety perspectives of older adults with vision loss. Our study focused on the person-environment interaction to ascertain whether participants' concerns are addressed by three commonly used home safety assessments.

Method: Twenty-two older adults with vision loss participated in face-to-face interviews regarding their perspectives on home safety. We compared categories generated from a content analysis of the data with the contents of three standardized home safety assessments.

Results: Five categories of home safety emerged from the analysis: (1) lighting, (2) contrast, (3) visual distractions, (4) glare, and (5) compensation strategies. Comparisons of content in the three home safety assessments with emerged categories revealed that study participants had specific concerns about home safety that were not thoroughly addressed in the selected assessments.

Conclusion: The findings provide preliminary content areas that should be included in the development of a home assessment specific to the low vision population.