Mature Market Experts: more news and stats you can use on boomers, seniors and the mature market – Wet or dry? And the vision thing for seniors . . . A good friend of mine has age-related macular degeneration (AMD) which means, in layman’s terms, he is slowly going blind (side note: did you know that there are two types of macular degeneration? Wet and dry). Luckily for him, he lives at a continuing care retirement community, so his life is very manageable. So far, he hasn’t let this obstacle slow him down. But every time I visit him, I am reminded of the importance of vision and just how frequently mainstream society forgets the importance of making their advertisements, appliance dials, etc. readable for aging eyes.

Even for people without this horrible disease, the vision thing becomes a challenge. Older people’s eyes have smaller pupils which mean that less light is entering into their eyes than a younger person’s. This lack of light makes determining colors very difficult. And for scientific reasons far too complicated for me to explain, your eyes become less sensitive to additive light (i.e., lamps and overhead lights). Plus, the lens of the eye tends to accumulate yellowish deposits with age. All of which means, blues and purples appear dull or even gray to seniors.

If you’re having a hard time discriminating between colors, then you’re going to have trouble distinguishing boundaries for colors that are close together. I have often argued with our team’s graphic designers to avoid collages because I can’t see/differentiate where one photo/image begins and the other one ends. Thus, making it hard for me to comprehend what I am looking for. What I ask for is high contrast between objects — black text on a white background, for instance. Most times, increasing the text size will greatly improve contrast and readability. I know most of you are thinking, “No duh!” This is obvious to you and me . . . not so obvious to a 20-something working at the typical ad agency.

Next up is decreased acuity, meaning simply that as you age your eyes have decreased ability to detect fine details (i.e. small print). Add to this the difficulty glare adds for an older set of eyes and you begin to understand why more and more of your friends have stopped driving at night (here’s a video of me discussing vision and marketing at a meeting with T. Rowe Price marketing folks).

So what do you have trouble reading? Is there anything we could do on our website that would improve your reading enjoyment? Let me know.

PS      Good news for my friend: scientists are in hot pursuit of a treatment for macular degeneration.