DEVELOPMENT OF EYE DISORDERS SIMULATIVE GLASSES

There are progressive ocular disorders occurring mainly in the middle age and old population that sometimes are difficult to be explained to the patients themselves, to their  family and even to medical students or sometimes to doctors who are initiating their residence training in the specialty of ophthalmology.

Among these diseases one can emphasize the cataract, the glaucoma and the age-related macular degeneration. The cataract is the progressive, curable by surgery, opacification of the crystalline lens with symptoms of vision blurring and photophobia mainly under the sunlight or in the presence of frontal light at night from artificial lights for environment illumination or from car lights. The glaucoma is the progressive and irreversible narrowing of the visual field because of the optic nerve damage mainly from high intraocular pressure that finally results in blindness, unless the intraocular pressure is lowered by medications or surgery, which are supposed to stabilize the clinical picture. The age-related macular degeneration is an older people lesion of the macula, the central portion of the retina, where the eye has the best visual acuity and the people sees a black spot in the central field of vision.

With the aim of reaching the goal of educating these people for these diseases it was developed a kit of prototype homemade glasses using easy-to-find and cheap materials like one-dollar glasses, acrylic ink in the colors black and white and a small brush.

The glasses where painted according the disease to be simulated. In the case of cataract, for instance, it was painted a white net on the entire glass surface in such a way that who uses this glasses will approximately feel the cataract symptoms above described. In the same way, to simulate glaucoma it was painted almost all the lens in black leaving a small transparent hole in the center of the lens. Finally for simulating the age-related macular degeneration it was painted a black spot in the center of the lens.       
By doing so, one can easily and with cheap materials educate fo frequent eye disorders. 

BONATTI, Fernanda A. S. Terapia com Design: desenvolvimento de equipamento brasileiro de auxílio à visão subnormal ou baixa visão. Revista Design em foco, v.II, n.1 jan/jun 2005, pp. 27-39.
COOPER, Rachel Ethics and Altruism: What Constitutes Socially Responsible Design? In Design Management Review  Summer, 2005.
PLUT, Adriana  Alívio para os olhos  Revista 20/20 – Brasil, Nº. 16, pp. 40-42, setembro.
www.reineckerreha.de