Navigating the World with Low Vision

Ever since Yingzi Xiong, PhD, joined the Wilmer Eye Institute in 2023, she has been planning the construction of a new mobility lab. The blueprints include surround-sound speakers and a visual projection system to create immersive environments, replicating street crossings, restaurants, and other situations that would help her study how patients with vision loss navigate the world.  

“My lab has a strong focus on independent travel,” says Xiong, the Barbara Simerl Rising Professor of Low Vision. “People with sensory loss still want to go shopping, still want to go to church. So, they need to navigate locating their Uber or trying to find their train, and it’s a lot to manage if they have vision loss, or worse, if they also have hearing loss.”  

As one her first steps, Xiong put the right team in place, including André DeGrenier, who graduated from the Peabody Institute in 2025 with a master’s degree in computer music and currently serves as the primary technician for the lab’s immersive audiovisuals. 

The only missing piece remaining was the funding to begin the research. Now, thanks to a gift from Michael Hankin, former trustee and vice chair of Johns Hopkins Medicine, his wife, Ann, and Brown Advisory, where he serves as president and CEO, the lab is becoming a reality.  

“We were waiting patiently for funding to be in place until one day we heard there was a very generous gift from the Hankins and Brown Advisory, who have finally made it possible for us to get the lab started,” Xiong says. 

The funds are part of a total $1 million gift made in honor of clinicians in the Department of Neurology, the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, the Department of Neurosurgery, the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and the Wilmer Eye Institute. The gift provides one-time grants to support junior faculty members as they gather the data required to apply for larger grants. 

“For junior faculty members, it’s not just the money that’s important, but it’s the confidence they have in you,” Xiong says of the grant and her rising professorship. “It shows they trust the importance of the research and your ability to carry it out.”  

Rising professorships, like the one Xiong holds, are designed to give early-career faculty members research, financial, and mentorship support to accelerate their careers as Wilmer’s next generation of scientists.

Xiong says her professorship not only makes her more competitive in the world of research but also allows her to bring her findings to low vision patients. The new lab will help her do that by expanding her research in two main areas: understanding how patients with vision and hearing loss use sensory integration to navigate the world and learning what makes a space visually accessible to patients with impaired vision.

“We are connecting the basic science with the complications of real-world tasks to understand the principles and translate that into how our therapies can work with patients,” Xiong says.

Current therapies for low-vision patients include skill training, assistive technology, and task modification. Xiong says while those tools can be helpful for many patients, they also come with drawbacks. For example, training to use auditory skills won’t work for those who also have hearing loss, which affects about 40% of patients seeking low vision services in the United States. Some assistive technology can be also difficult for some patients to learn to use. 

Xiong’s studies have the chance to change everyday life for low vision patients, like Beth Hendler-Friedman, who participated in a visual accessibility study. She has low vision as a result of macular telangiectasia, a rare disease that causes progressive central vision loss. As a result, she had to step away from jobs as a vascular sonographer and sonography teacher and no longer drives. And there’s also the emotional impact of losing her vision. 

“Initially, one of my concerns was, am I going to see my children graduate? Am I going to someday be able to see my children walk down the aisle?” Hendler-Friedman says. “So, there were a lot of emotional pieces to becoming low vision as well as the practical things like walking into door jambs and not being able to find your right shoe when you need to.” 

Hendler-Friedman says she hopes her participation in this study and Xiong’s future research will give her and other low-vision patients the tools for a more independent future. 

“I want to be able to wake up in the morning, put my glasses on, and just go about my day. But that’s not exactly how that goes,” Hendler-Friedman says. “The independence — where I can get where I want to go and find what I’m looking for without being frustrated — would mean the world to me.”