Facilitating transitions: Guiding principles for community-based tool and app development for youth with vision impairment

The transition from adolescence to adulthood represents a fundamental step for everyone, however, for young people with vision impairment (VI) there are several added barriers and challenges (Tomlinson and Killingback, 2024 British Journal of Visual Impairment 1–15). Hence, we aimed to establish what tool/application can ease this transition by working closely with young VI people from across the country by using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach (Metatla et al., 2015 CoDesign 11 35–48). This ongoing qualitative research was carried out by working alongside 20 young people (divided in 3 smaller working groups of which two met online and one in person) with different VIs and complexity of conditions for four months. The data collection methods included open discussion about the VI priorities during the working group meetings, exchanges of ideas and discussions between meetings through a dedicated forum, and qualitative surveys and reports on specific topics (e.g., events the young people would be interested in and what needs to be considered for these events to be successful, applications they have experienced and like or dislike and why). By placing a strong emphasis on CBPR and the co-researching and co-designing with the end users, this study reported limitations (e.g., personal and social assumptions, cultural disparities, fragmented tools, complex websites, communication barriers) and positive aspects (e.g., guidance from sighted or VI individuals) of existing applications. The goal is to distil valuable information guiding the development of new, accessible, and beneficial applications for young individuals with VI navigating similar challenges.