Linda’s Story through Photovoice: Achieving Independent Living with Dignity and Ingenuity in the Face of Environmental Inequities

For older people with disabilities environmental design will become increasingly important to their quality of life as they expect supportive structures within community settings to facilitate their functioning, independence and well-being. This paper reports on photovoice research to amplify the issues one older woman with mobility limitations as a result of visual and neurological challenges experienced in a small city located in the south central part of the USA. The use of photovoice to illuminate these issues was one substudy of a larger scale project focusing on positive aging in this small city, the home to a large state-assisted university. The authors, which includes Linda, the principal photovoice researcher, offer a rationale guiding photovoice, describe the photovoice method the participatory research model incorporated, identify the environmental inequities the participant experienced in her community and immediate living situation, and document the affordances she developed to support her mobility, safety and quality of life. The authors then discuss how a community exhibit supported dissemination of the participant’s photovoice content to the general community, and the outcomes the participant experienced in the form of empowerment and environmental enhancements ensuing from the combined influence of photovoice and community-based dissemination of her findings.