Inclusive Technologies

HealthSpot is preparing to offer large, enclosed health care kiosks in public locations so people can access their records, their physicians, and other medical services from anywhere. What a great idea! These virtual clinics could be in pharmacies, airports, college campuses, rural libraries, even in developing countries. We’re hoping that enough attention is being paid to usability and accessibility in the design, as this product sits in a market and policy hotspot — there’s lots of attention right now on making both kiosks and health IT as inclusive as possible.

The American Foundation for the Blind’s (AFB) AccessWorld has published the results of a new study on barriers encountered by people who are blind or have low vision when they use everyday household and electronic devices. The results include an all-too-familiar list: no speech output, no physical landmarks, and unreadable printed and electronic text. AFB wonders if touchscreens and small displays are actually making these products less accessible, and it’s hard to argue against that.

AFB surveyed 2 groups of people: a random sample of American households, screened for vision loss; and a sample of people who had previous contact with AFB. Read the article to see the interesting ways in which these 2 groups differed in demographics and in technology use.