The topic reached a turning point when we decided to focus our attention more specifically on the elderly visually impaired people and not on visually impaired people in general; the choice was partly driven by the current European situation: given the increasing size of the older adult population (over 60) in many countries, there is a pressing need to identify the nature of age-related vision impairments, their underlying mechanisms and how they impact on older adults performance of everyday visual tasks. The design that takes care for those people with special needs is called Accessible Design or “Accessibility”.

Thanks to our lecturer, we had also the chance to develop our topic at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim (Norway) between March and August 2015. To deal with a deeply different reality than the Italian one and having access to previous studies In this specific field combined with a wide bibliography, increased our personal interest and enthusiasm even more.

This search ranges from theoretical fundamentals to applications. There have been a large number of interesting developments in our understanding of how lighting and people interact.

We started from an analysis of this new social class and of the visual degenerative diseases that may be affected; it was crucial to know more about the needs of elderly visually impaired people and in which ways solutions could be reached In a different social and spatial milieu and at the same time the European Legislation with its standards and different Guidelines on these issues were taken into account.The Theory of Color was subsequently analyzed, some visual functions such as the color discrimination, daylighting devices, different artificial light sources to then conclude with our experimental part. In application, it had been possible to develop full-scale prototypes of the residential environment and to test the different daylighting and artificial light devices designed in our experiments. The readers who expect to find exceptional design projects in this search, or ready-made technical solutions to be easily applied, will surely be disappointed; the results reached match that precise lighting and climate condition in that specific year’s period. Unfortunately it was not possible to investigate, from an experimental point of view, even the LED technology, not being available in the laboratory.

The central purpose of this study is to contribute to our knowledge of this Accessible Design in a way that can be supported by the knowledge of the situation and by the experience and expectations of those who are affected by visual impairments. To fully achieve this aim and to help them to better perform their home daily tasks it is necessary to understand their particular needs and problems arising from the reduction or absence of vision.