SeeWay: Australia’s Link to Living Well with Low Vision

For Australians living with low vision, the digital landscape offers contradiction: abundant information, but no single trustworthy place to find it. People newly diagnosed with conditions like macular degeneration or glaucoma - overwhelmingly aged 60 plus - are left navigating a fragmented, jargon-heavy internet alone. Carers feel unprepared. Families feel helpless. Eye-care professionals lack a platform they can refer to with confidence.Guide Dogs NSW/ACT, trusted for decades in the vision community, saw the gap and engaged Nightjar to close it: a credible, accessible, personalised platform that could meet people facing changes in their vision where they are - with crucial support.

Nightjar delivered SeeWay in two phases.Phase One launched an MVP built around a personalised onboarding experience that segments users by condition severity and topic interest, feeding a dynamic feed of curated content. Native accessibility settings - large text, high contrast, dark mode - were built in from day one, alongside WCAG 2.2 AAA compliance verified by third-party specialists. Content is available without sign-up, with gentle prompts to create a profile for a more personalised experience.Phase Two, informed by behavioural data, saw Nightjar restructure navigation, reduce cognitive load, and reposition SeeWay from content repository to guided, supportive experience.

SeeWay represents a step-change in the organisation’s ability to deliver impact at scale. While severe low vision is supported by the NDIS and the 1-1 support Guide Dogs offer through their service dogs, white canes and mobility training, there's a lack of trustworthy 1-to-many resource platforms. Now, every person who finds credible information, develops a new skill, or feels less alone in their diagnosis, represents a social return that their traditional service model could never achieve. As an organisation measured by community impact, that multiplier effect is significant.

We designed and engineered a comprehensive set of features, built around specific needs of users with low vision that were uncovered in user research:- Personalised onboarding questionnaire assessing condition severity and everyday impact, used to segment users into personalised content pathways- Native accessibility settings: large text, high contrast and dark mode - these features received outstanding feedback in user testing- WCAG 2.2 AAA compliance - the highest accessibility standard - independently verified by digital accessibility consultants- Content available without account creation, with gentle prompts toward profile creation for a personalised experience- Persistent, prominent search bar across all pages- Text-to-speech leveraging native CMS AI functionality: users can listen to any article rather than read it - In-article sentiment tracker (‘Was this article helpful?’) to measure and improve content quality over time- Pathways to mental health support, for users navigating the emotional weight of a new diagnosis- Pathways to Digital Skills Training: guided courses to help users make the most of assistive technology on their phone, tablet, or computer- Triage to other Guide Dogs services (white canes, Guide Dogs) for users with severe low vision- Video content integration - Topic library spanning eye health, practical lifestyle, financial assistance, mental wellbeing, community advocacy, and assistive tools