Designing for the blind requires analysing and understanding how one can use the other four senses to make the product usable. Hence, surfaces, textures, touch, and sound are the most commonly used techniques in a product designed for the visually impaired—such as tactile surfaces and haptics, initiating alert sounds, or a speech reader. Below are a few innovations created by various designers worldwide to make the world better for the visually impaired.
1. Dot Tablet: a visualisation tool
Designed by the brand Dot In, this Dot tablet provides an innovative solution for the visually impaired or blind people to feel what they draw through their fingers. It is attached to a drawing tablet, where they can draw with one hand and sense through dots with the other. Such a concept has opened up design possibilities with inclusivity or catering to a certain niche of audience in help. This tablet can also help one to visualise any image or digital content without having to have a voice-over attached for a better explanation. It gives a sense of confidence and relative independence.
The Dot pad provides a canvas of 2400 such dots in a grid, and since the visually impaired generally have other heightened senses, they can feel the texture with incredible clarity in mind.
2. Sense 5: A smart walking stick
Designer Werteloberfell incorporated real-time image recognition technology into a walking stick to sense nearby objects or obstacles and alert the user. A camera is attached to the lower front part of the stick; hence, it can be a useful guide for a visually impaired person to navigate the unknown. The form of the product is slim, elegant, light and easy to hold with an angled shape. It also comes with a torch that helps the people or vehicles in the surroundings be aware and for the camera to sense the obstacles in the dark through AI. Since the stick uses power for its functioning, it also alerts the user when the battery needs to recharge.
3. LyriQ Assistive: A text-to-speech reader
Empowering accessibility for the blind or visually impaired, this innovation has helped a lot of the catered audience to read books and other written materials. Its form is compact, just like a fold-flat laptop, where one can place their material or a printed page over it, shut the flap, and convert it into speech. This device is then connected to either hearing aids or speakers via Bluetooth. In order to make it convenient for the user to operate the product, the tactile buttons are designed to be large and optimum in number for any assistance.
4. Tactile paving: for safe navigation
A Japanese engineer designed two kinds of tactile bricks in 1965: one to help a person walk along the pathway and the other to warn the visually impaired about any intersection, a right-angle turn, or a termination towards a moving road. These pathways usually had long, stripped tactile patterns with rounded edges for a smoother walk. The warning blocks had detectable dots, symbolically representing when one needed to stop and contemplate the next step. They were designed to be a kit of parts that can be assembled as per the requirement. These tiles were made from materials such as ceramic, rubber, plastic or concrete.
5. Eatsy cup: an easy kitchenware
It was designed as a research project by a Singapore-based designer, Jexter Kim, to understand the issue of the visually impaired having trouble eating alone. Hence, he designed a few kitchen products – a plate, a bowl, a cup and three utensils where each of these has an olive green spot at the top that can act as a sensory cue to learn about the direction of the cup. The Eatsy plate and bowls with such green flags make the simplest eating and serving processes easier, such as scooping food from the products as well as pouring them from one to another.
6. A safe mug: to not spill
Bell was designed by Sang-hoon Lee and Yong-bum Lim, and catered to the idea of pouring hot liquid in the cup safely without having to spill or overflow. The inner surface was built in a way that reacted to the water being poured, and the user could stop to pour, hearing the sound that came from the mug at various levels. There are also sensors attached to the mug; hence, when the user holds it through the handle, they can feel if it’s overflowing or at the 3/4th of the level.
References:
Wille, M. (2020) This tableware enables the visually impaired to eat and drink by feel alone, Input. Available at: https://www.inverse.com/input/design/this-tableware-enables-the-visually-impaired-to-eat-and-drink-by-feel-alone-eatsy (Accessed: 28 April 2024).
Lyriq assistive text-to-speech reader with keypad (2024) New England Low Vision. Available at: https://nelowvision.com/product/lyriq-assistive-text-to-speech-reader-with-keypad/ (Accessed: 28 April 2024).
Top 10 products for people who are blind (2024) New England Low Vision. Available at: https://nelowvision.com/top-10-products-for-people-who-are-blind-2020/ (Accessed: 28 April 2024).
Seth, R. (2009) No more overspills even if you are blind – yanko design, Yanko Design – Modern Industrial Design News. Available at: https://www.yankodesign.com/2009/08/06/no-more-overspills-even-if-you-are-blind/ (Accessed: 28 April 2024).
[email protected] (2023) How product design is re-shaping experiences for the visually impaired?, Strate School of Design. Available at: https://strate.in/how-product-design-is-re-shaping-experiences-for-the-visually-impaired/ (Accessed: 28 April 2024).
