BVI

A widely used abbreviation in accessibility and HCI research denoting "blind and visually impaired" — the inclusive category that covers people who are totally blind, legally blind, or have any form of low vision. Closely related variants include BLV ("blind and low vision"), favoured in newer publications for plain language, and "PVI" ("people with visual impairments"). The phrasing matters for practitioners: formal standards (WCAG, EN 301 549) generally use "people with low vision" and "blind users" as separate terms, while research literature often uses BVI/BLV as a single participant category. When recruiting users or reporting findings, specifying the visual acuity, field of view, and onset (congenital vs acquired) is more useful than the umbrella abbreviation alone.