Seeing a sunset: Exploring the joy of vision, in healthy eyes and ocular disease

Vision plays a critical role in the performance of various functional tasks, and can also be an inherent source of enjoyment unrelated to a functional task. This study aimed to explore the sources and importance of visual enjoyment and how these might alter with vision loss.

Fourteen adults (26-81 years) with self-reported healthy vision and 15 (37-84 years) with vision loss (inherited retinal disease, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration) participated. Across four focus groups (2 × healthy vision, 2 × vision loss), participants were asked about sources of visual enjoyment, attitudes around the distinction between vision to perform tasks versus vision as an inherent source of enjoyment, how sources of visual enjoyment may have changed through eye disease or aging, and experiences with eye care providers regarding visual enjoyment. Transcriptions were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

Almost all participants felt sources of visual enjoyment were important. Most could think of examples of visual enjoyment as distinct from visual function (e.g., appreciating leaf colour changes, stargazing), with a minority noting sources of enjoyment that either depended upon, or were facilitated by, good vision (e.g., playing golf, reading). Although around half believed the distinction between visual enjoyment and visual function was important, some were unclear whether there was a distinction or saw no distinction. Most felt that aging and vision loss with ocular disease had altered what they considered as sources of visual enjoyment. While direct experience of eye care practitioners considering personal sources of visual enjoyment when providing advice was mostly lacking, many respondents felt visual enjoyment would be important or beneficial to consider.

Sources of visual enjoyment are important to most people with and without vision loss. These results suggest that some patients may value having their personal sources of visual enjoyment considered by eye care providers.