Toward digital inclusiveness for visually impaired users: affordance principles for designing assistive interfacing technology

Purpose Visually impaired users face significant digital exclusion due to inaccessible interfaces, perpetuating barriers in education, employment and social participation. While assistive interfacing technology (AIT) is pivotal for accessibility, its design often misaligns with the capabilities of the visually impaired, culminating in high abandonment rates. This study reconceptualizes AIT design through affordance theory to bridge the gap between functional features and effective usage. Design/methodology/approach Based on a systematic literature review, we applied affordance theory to synthesize empirical insights regarding operational input and informational output of AIT. Design principles were derived from diverse prescriptions of AIT in past studies to reveal how operational input and informational output should be designed to maximize accessibility. Findings Focal principles in terms of operational input include context-aware modality selection, minimalist reusable actions and automated action sequencing to reduce cognitive load. Likewise, focal principles of informational output include multimodal redundancy, proactive granular disclosure and precision-calibrated feedback. Essentially, sensory compensation is essential in designing both operational input and informational output of AIT. We pioneer an affordance-centered framework that explicitly connects designer features of AIT with the capabilities of visually impaired users. Originality/value We refine theory by foregrounding nonvisual perception dynamics and delivering theoretically grounded insights to guide disability-centered human–computer interaction. Practitioners would benefit from our work by gleaning actionable principles that can be incorporated into the design of AIT to maximize accessibility to digital resources for the visually impaired.