Intersecting Liminality: Acquiring a Smartphone as a Blind or Low Vision Older Adult

TL;DR

This paper explores the unique social and technical challenges faced by blind or low vision older adults acquiring smartphones, introducing the concept of Intersecting Liminality to better understand their transitional experiences.

Contribution

It introduces the novel framework of Intersecting Liminality to explain the complex, overlapping transitions of vision loss, aging, and technology adoption among older adults.

Findings

BLV older adults experience liminality during smartphone acquisition.

Mutual aid within the blind community facilitates transitions.

The framework helps inform more effective assistive interventions.

Abstract

Older adults are increasingly acquiring smartphones. But acquiring smartphones can be difficult, and little is known about the particular challenges of older adults who are additionally blind or losing their vision. We shed light on the social and technical aspects of acquiring smartphones with vision loss, based on deep qualitative interviews with 22 blind or low vision (BLV) older adults aged 60 and over. Through our grounded theory analysis, we found that BLV older adults experience liminality as they acquire smartphones and transition through re-acquiring smartphones as they become blind, and they can transition through liminality by participating in mutual aid within the blind community. We contribute the notion of "Intersecting Liminality," which explains the marginalizing experience of simultaneously transitioning through vision loss, aging, and technology acquisition. We contend that Intersecting Liminality can serve as a framework that centers the dynamic nature of disability to help our community generate a more nuanced understanding of technology acquisition and more effective assistive interventions.