Using touch technology to make kiosks more accessible

Using touch technology to make kiosks more accessible
Tags: Airport Kiosks, Hardware
April 14, 2011

I'm excited to be featured blogger for KioskMarketPlace.com and SelfServiceWorld.com, and it's my goal to write about kiosks with an emphasis on what we at F-Origin know best -- touch technology and related markets, applications, events, and business news.

A recent article on Kiosk Market Place about the National Federation of the Blind suing airports over non-accessible kiosks, inspired me to write about how touch technology can help solve industry problems.

In many ways this case is as clear as it is unfortunate. It's also a fact that you will never please all people all the time. The old adage of, "One size fits all" does not apply with kiosks, but there are opportunities to improve. With more and more institutions like airports implementing self-service options like kiosks, a growing convenience for the non-disabled population can simultaneously become a challenge for those with disabilities, including vision impairment.

Reading this article and being a very frequent traveler, it's quite evident that airports expect people in general to use the kiosks, which can concurrently present a significant hindrance for folks with disabilities.

There is a solution to this problem though, which probably will appeal to both the airports and to the National Federation of the Blind. Utilizing the force-based touch technology from F-Origin, it is possible to create Braille or raised-button pattern touch panels, which dramatically change the possibilities to build a self-service kiosk for the vision-impaired population. It can also provide varying touch thresholds to differentiate between a lighter touch for "reading" the Braille text or locating a patterned button, and then a firmer touch for "selecting" an option.

This technology, combined with special user-specific software and audio/haptic-feedback can create a kiosk easily used by people with vision impairments. ATMs have been simply configured for the visually impaired for some time, and even though a kiosk is often more complex, I'm convinced that it can be designed in a way so it's easy to use while still covering all the services of a kiosk in standard configuration.

Airports, and similar institutions, could chose to retrofit and/or compliment a portion of their kiosks with these features and capabilities. This way they can offer self-service to a wider audience, continue to make their facilities more time and cost efficient, and maybe even spend less time in the courtroom.