Keywords: Visiul impairment, primary care, accessibilty

Background:

Despite widespread primary care coverage in Türkiye, little is known about visually impaired individuals’ experiences, persistent accessibility barriers, and coping strategies, which may hinder equitable and continuous primary healthcare delivery.

Research questions:

Individuals with visual impairment, counted among vulnerable populations, face various challenges and inequalities while accessing healthcare services. The aim is to examine, through qualitative methods, experiences of visually impaired individuals while accessing healthcare services, and accessibility barriers they encounter.

Method:

Study was designed using qualitative research approach within phenomenological framework. Focus group interviews were employed to gain comprehensive understanding of participants’ lived experiences. Using purposive sampling, total 28 participants were recruited, and discussions were conducted with four focus groups, each consisting 6–8 participants. All interviews were audio-recorded, and transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. Data collection was concluded upon satisfactory data saturation. Coding process consisted of two researchers independently generating codes and identifying categories, which were subsequently evaluated in collaboration with a third expert researcher.

Results:

Individuals with visual impairment encounter various accesability barriers while accessing healthcare services, particularly related to physical layouts, accessibility of information, and the usability of healthcare technologies. Participants who reported positive communication experiences with their physicians tended to utilize primary healthcare services, whereas those with negative experiences indicated a preference for hospitals due to the availability of a wider range of physicians. In this study, there was a consensus regarding inadequacy of physical and informational accessibility in both primary care settings and hospitals.

Conclusions:

The inadequate level of disability awareness among healthcare professionals negatively impacts communication process with visually impaired patients, rendering their healthcare accesss difficult. Improvement is possible through patient-centered communication training. Inequalities faced by the visually impaired face while accessing to healthcare services can be addressed through collaborative practices between public institutions and organizations, based on the right to health, and visually impaired individuals as stakeholders.

Points for discussion:

How can continuity of care in primary healthcare be strengthened for visually impaired individuals beyond physical accessibility, particularly in communication, digital health use, and shared decision-making?

What practical changes at the primary care level (training, team-based care, organizational adaptations) are needed to reduce accessibility barriers for visually impaired patients in everyday clinical practice?

How can patients’ lived experiences be systematically integrated into primary care policy and service design to ensure more equitable and person-centered healthcare for people with visual impairment?