Customer satisfaction and visual impairment

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How is this related?

Customer satisfaction is an important topic and is therefore a constant focus for companies and service providers.
But most of them tend to overlook a drastically growing target group: People with visual impairments.

Visual impairment is becoming a widespread disease

Let’s say goodbye to the belief that there are only very few visually impaired people and that they therefore play no role in customer satisfaction. After all, relevant statistics only cover those 3-4 % of the population, whose visual impairment is officially registered.

But if you consider that 60% of all people over the age of 16 need glasses or contact lenses, it becomes clear that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Hardly anyone who wears glasses would describe themselves as “visually impaired”!

Furthermore, according to WHO, these numbers are increasing dramatically. Reasons for this are:

• Increase of diabetes diseases and therefore of visual impairments by 25%. According to IAPB. “one third of the diabetic patients must reckon with eye problems”.
• Aging of the population, as 80% of eye diseases affect people over 50 years of age.
• Increasing myopia, from currently one third of the world’s population to up to 50% in 2050, caused in part by people and especially children looking too much at smartphones, tablets and computers.

More and more young people are also seeing worse and worse!

Customer satisfaction despite visual impairment

People with poor vision want two things above all: spatial orientation and good legibility of information.

Shiny surfaces, glass fronts and a lack of visual contrasts between walls, floors, stairs and doors: such interior design makes it difficult for people with poor vision to find their way around a store, restaurant or museum.  They become insecure and therefore feel uncomfortable. And that’s not exactly the best prerequisite for satisfied customers!

Great tips on how you can support visually impaired people with a smart color concept can be found at Brillux, for example.
The specialist for barrier-free color design offers lots of illustrative material, a contrast calculator and even webinars. To the Brillux website

Another problem is signs, package inserts, product packaging and labels, instructions for use, invoices, etc., which – if at all – can only be deciphered with difficulty and the use of aids. This, of course, does not contribute to customer satisfaction either.

The remedy is to focus not only on visually chic design, but also on readability, e.g.:

• Strong contrast between background and font color
• Larger font and line spacing
• Sans serif, clear font

Make it easy for all customers to find their products and read information!

As customers get older, it becomes more and more difficult for them. If they’re happy with that?

Audio information – for more customer satisfaction

Especially when there is very little space available, an easily readable font is often simply not feasible.

In these cases, Audio Format is an ideal solution. Using a speech code and the free app of the same name, customers can have the information read out to them. Conveniently from their own smartphone. Or adjust the font size and contrast on the display to suit their own eyesight.

This is a real relief for anyone who has difficulty reading, including people with cognitive impairments, reading difficulties or language deficits.

A “read aloud” service like this is sure to improve customer satisfaction for people with reading problems!

Listen to or read in large print on a smartphone: This service really helps customers!