From itnews.com.au
Sydney Uni explores ultra-thin haptic wearables.
The virtual buttons on touchscreens (aka soft keys) enable the wide range of functionality of touchscreen devices – the only downside is that if you can’t see them, they’re next to impossible to use.
The issue led a lengthy court case between Blind Citizens Australia and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) over the bank’s touchscreen Albert terminals, which left many vision impaired customers being forced to divulge PINs to checkout staff in order to make an eftpos or credit card payment.
Although CBA has since undertaken to provide enhanced accessibility features to its Albert tablets, and offer training to merchants, it doesn’t really solve the problem that touchscreens and other devices without tactile buttons are largely unusable to blind people.