How do people living with sight impairment experience nature during their lives?
Sensing Nature was a two-year research project aiming to answer this question. It listened to participants with varying forms and severities of sight loss to understand how they encountered a sense of wellbeing (or otherwise) with different types of nature.
The project explored how people with varying forms and severities of sight impairment experience diverse types of nature and how this contributes to their sense of wellbeing (or conversely, impairment) through the life course.
Approximately 285 million people are thought to live with sight impairment across the world – a number that is increasing as populations begin to age and conditions such as diabetes become more common.
Whilst life with sight impairment can be both debilitating and deeply distressing, accounts shared by people who were born blind and those living with long-term sight loss also convey rich multisensory worlds.
Many of these wider sensory experiences are currently overlooked in our understanding of how people sense and make sense of nature in the contexts of their everyday and whole lives.
The overall aim of the Sensing Nature project was, therefore, to improve the way we understand, enable and promote more positive, inclusive multisensory nature experiences amongst people living with sight impairments.
The project includes in-depth qualitative fieldwork and on-going stakeholder engagement and outreach.
Nature is experienced in diverse ways; from feeling the elements and encountering plants and animals near home, to venturing further afield to parks, woodlands, the coast, countryside and mountains. Recognising this, Sensing Nature has been collaborating with a range of stakeholders—national and international—to improve the way we understand, enable and promote more inclusive nature experiences amongst adults with sight impairments through a range of different activities and outputs.
Outcomes
Easing into Nature
The first is a resource for anyone whose lives have been touched or shaped by sight impairment in some way, including people with an eye condition, close friends or family, and anyone keen to facilitate more inclusive nature experiences. Through sharing the experiences of a range of people and signposting other useful resources, this booklet aims to highlight opportunities for engaging with nature in pleasurable and meaningful ways. It can be downloaded below as a pdf document or as a plain text word file, or you can listen to the audio files.
Inclusive design guidance
The second output, produced in collaboration with the Sensory Trust, is an inclusive design briefing featuring ten top tips for designing and managing community nature settings with sight impairment in mind. Whether your space is a park, garden, reserve or woodland, these tips aim to promote access with dignity and ensure more people feel welcome and supported to visit. This briefing can be downloaded here, either as a pdf document or a screen-reader compatible word document.
Walking group guidance
The third output, produced in collaboration with Walking for Health, British Blind Sport and Dr Karis Petty at the University of Sussex, is a set of guidelines designed to help walking groups cater for the varied needs and priorities of walkers with sight impairment. Recognising the importance of tailored support in both specialist and mainstream walking groups, the guidance provides tips for facilitating and sharing walking experiences in a meaningful way with sight impaired walkers, alongside opportunities for setting up new walks. This can be downloaded here, again either as a pdf document or a screen-reader compatible word document.
Supporting nature adventures
During the project, we came across several organisations, such as the Vision of Adventure, the Calvert Trust, Milton Mountaineers and Blind Veterans UK, who are providing valuable opportunities to experience a sense of adventure in nature. Whether it’s sailing, waterskiing, climbing, caving or other so-called ‘risky’ activities, these organisations support people to balance positive risk taking with genuine skills development to promote (otherwise somewhat elusive) opportunities for ‘wilder’ nature immersion and achievement. We drew on this expertise as part of a collaborative event in Bristol in September 2018. A podcast summarising the key conversations held during this event is available here.
Supporting nature adventures
During the project, we came across several organisations, such as the Vision of Adventure, the Calvert Trust, Milton Mountaineers and Blind Veterans UK, who are providing valuable opportunities to experience a sense of adventure in nature. Whether it’s sailing, waterskiing, climbing, caving or other so-called ‘risky’ activities, these organisations support people to balance positive risk taking with genuine skills development to promote (otherwise somewhat elusive) opportunities for ‘wilder’ nature immersion and achievement. We drew on this expertise as part of a collaborative event in Bristol in September 2018. A podcast summarising the key conversations held during this event is available here.
If you would like hard copies of any of these outputs or would like to feedback on the content, please do get in touch via: Sarah.Bell@exeter.ac.uk.
Although the funded phase of the project is now complete, we are always keen to explore opportunities to build on and extend these collaborations and activities, so do please get in touch if this is of interest.