A nuanced understanding of the strategies that people who are blind or visually impaired employ to perform different instrumental activities of daily living (iADLs) is essential to the success of future visual accessibility aids.
Lily Turkstra
(she/her)
Junior Specialist
Psychological & Brain Sciences
University of California, Santa Barbara
Lily Turkstra is a Junior Specialist and lab manager in the Bionic Vision Lab at UC Santa Barbara.
She has extensive research experience with human psychophysics, has worked with clinical populations, and is well versed in statistical software analysis and programming.
Lily was previously a behavioral interventionist at California PsychCare/Behavioral Health 360, where she used a combination of speech, occupational, and play therapies to create and employ therapeutic plans for individuals with autism and other developmental disorders. Most recently, she has been a Software Quality Assurance specialist at Tapestry Solutions (a Beoing company) and a Behavioral Health and Performance Intern at NASA.
Starting Fall ‘23, she will be a PhD student in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at UC Santa Barbara.
Education
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BS in Research Psychology, 2022
California Polytechnic State University (CalPoly), San Luis Obispo, CA
Project Affiliate
Predicting Visual Outcomes for Visual Prostheses
What do visual prosthesis users see, and why? Clinical studies have shown that the vision provided by current devices differs substantially from normal sight.
Immersive Virtual Reality Simulations of Bionic Vision
Embedding simulated prosthetic vision models in immersive virtual reality allows sighted subjects to act as virtual patients by “seeing” through the eyes of the patient.
Publications
Information needs and technology use for daily living activities at home by people who are blind
We present a mixed-methods approach that combines semi-structured interviews with a follow-up behavioral study to understand current and potential future use of technologies for daily activities around the home, especially for cooking.
Lily Turkstra, Lexie Van Os, Tanya Bhatia, Michael Beyeler arXiv:2305.03019
