How Can Homes Become Safer for Older Adults With Vision Loss?

This summer, we invite you to explore the experiences and accomplishments of our 2025-2026 Bass Connections project teams. This series features team-written profiles that showcase the discoveries, challenges and impact of teams who spent the year tackling real-world problems.

Individuals with low vision often face increased safety risks at home, yet many residential environments are not designed to support their independence. Over the past year, the Home Design for the Visually Impaired: A Path to Independence team developed practical strategies that promote safety, accessibility and quality of life for people aging in place. 

This team was led by Omar Mohiuddin (School of Medicine: Eye Center; Occupational Therapy), Ed Pagani (Office of the Provost: Assistant Vice President for External Partnerships) and Diane Whitaker (School of Medicine: Eye Center).

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By: Members of the Home Design for the Visually Impaired: A Path to Independence team
This profile has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

A bunched-up rug. Stairs that blend into the surrounding floor. A kitchen appliance that is difficult to distinguish from the countertop.

For an older adult living with vision loss, ordinary features of a home can become barriers to safety and independence. Yet many home assessments and safety recommendations do not fully account for how vision impairment affects everyday activities and quality of life.

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This year, our team focused on improving home safety and accessibility for older adults with vision impairments. Our goal was to answer a practical question: How can clinical knowledge about—and occupational therapy for—vision loss be translated into tools that help people make their homes safer, more accessible and easier to navigate? 

The challenge was not simply identifying potential hazards. It was developing resources that could work in real homes and support the people making decisions about living spaces, including older adults, caregivers, occupational therapists and healthcare providers. Partnering with healthcare technology company DwellSafe provided a pathway to ensure that the project outputs were not only evidence‑informed but also feasible, user‑centered and adaptable to both healthcare facilities and home settings. 

The first step was understanding how vision loss affects daily life at home. Rather than focusing only on a person’s medical diagnosis, the team developed a vision-focused home assessment centered on functional vision. The survey used self-report questions to explore how a person’s vision affects activities such as moving through rooms, identifying objects, managing lighting and completing daily tasks.

We then turned to the professionals who will use this information to determine appropriate interventions. In partnering with occupational therapists and other healthcare professionals, team members created occupational therapy training modules. These provide structured guidance for occupational therapists learning to identify and address vision-related risks in the home. The modules connect clinical principles with practical assessment strategies and are designed to support professional onboarding and continuing education.

Finally, our team developed product guides to help turn assessment findings into action. Organized around room-by-room needs, the guides offer recommendations that consider safety, accessibility and usability for people with vision impairment. They also account for practical concerns such as installation complexity, cost and whether a product is realistic for a particular home.

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Together, the three resources create a pathway from assessment to practical intervention. Once a person’s functional vision needs have been identified, that information can inform an occupational therapist’s recommendations, which can then lead to specific, feasible changes in the home.

For older adults with vision loss, safer aging in place may depend on changes that seem small but have a meaningful effect: clearer pathways, better lighting, more accessible spaces and recommendations tailored to the way each person experiences their home. With the support of interdisciplinary partnerships, this team’s resources are designed to help make those changes easier to identify and implement – one home and facility at a time.

Learn More

• Read more about Duke Eye Center's partnership with Dwellsafe.
• Browse additional summer series highlights.
• Learn about the project team experience through stories from students.

Main image: Team members share their interactive display at the Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase on April 15, 2026.