Smartphone Usage in Patients with Optic Atrophy

In March 2012, we surveyed 12 visually impaired patients with optic atrophy about their knowledge and familiarity with smartphone technology. Demographic information was collected regarding age, race, gender, visual acuity, and ocular diagnosis. The age (mean +/- SD)/mean +/- SD age was 45.6 +/- 14 years. Five of 12 (42%) patients used smartphones (mean age 35.6 +/- 10 years) and 7 of 12 (58%) patients used a basic mobile phone (mean age 52.7 +/- 12 years). The mean visual acuity of the smartphone users was 20/348 in the right eye and 20/369 in the left eye. The mean visual acuity of basic mobile phone users was 20/107 in the right eye and 20/93 in the left eye. Two of our smartphone users reported using a voice-activated assistant such as Siri on iPhone 4S. In our study, younger visually impaired optic atrophy patients were more likely to use smartphone technology (p = 0.05) despite their visual acuities being worse than the basic cell phone users. No patients in our study reported any recommendation from their low vision specialist concerning smartphone technology. Our results indicate that low vision specialists are not adequately educating visually impaired optic atrophy patients about features on smartphones that would improve their quality of life.