By Karin Bendixen

When Crisp & Clear met Mark Rocky in Comelta’s huge production hall, he was busy running the final tests on the company’s eye-catching red ticket vending machine before sending it for installation in a Barcelona Metro station, where it will be competing with other ticket machines. Rocky, an electrical and electronics engineer, is Systems R&D Director at the hardware manufacturer Comelta.

Hand operating a ticket vending machine

"Four years ago, we said it was impossible to make this machine accessible to blind people - but we did it. After all, it was a design challenge," admits Rocky.

"As far as we know, Comelta is probably the first manufacturer to introduce specific design and navigation features for totally blind people. In addition, our ergonomic design has been optimised to cater for the access and operating needs of all types of users, including those with physical, mental or sensorial disabilities."

Sight and Sound

The ticket machine has a maximum reach height of 138 cm and a minimum of 80 cm (to comply with Spanish standards, Ed.) and can be operated regardless of whether the user is standing or sitting. Braille and audio features enable blind users to operate the machine, which takes coins, notes and credit cards. The touch screen is designed for intuitive use: when users presses it, it conveys sight and sound information.

"We involve all different types of users in the design process – children, young, elderly and blind people, people with impaired eyesight and hearing, people with cognitive problems, physically disabled people and also foreigners, because of the language problem. User trials were conducted in collaboration with such advisors as CRID (Consorci de Recursos i Documentació per a l'Autonomia Personal), ONCE (the Spanish association of blind persons) and ProAsolutions," says Rocky.

The automatic vending machine for public transport tickets was a design challenge for Comelta. The touch screen is designed for intuitive use, involving pressing the 3D-effect buttons. Users can choose the language they want for the instructions and successive screens, with their relative help menus.

New for Old

However intuitive the machine’s operations are, some users may have difficulty getting the ticket they want. The designers have tried to overcome this problem, too, at least if the trip is a regular one: you just insert an old, used ticket in the system, which reads it and promptly issues an identical new one. This is just one of the functions that qualify this machine as a Design for All product.

"Although this function was designed for elderly people, who tend to be a little wary of technology, it has also turned out to be popular with blind users," comments Rocky.

To make sure that blind users will actually find the ticket machines, Barcelona Metro stations have been equipped with tactile paths that lead to them.

You never stop Learning

"ven though you have user trials, you still discover things you could have done better once the product is used in real life situations. After developing our first ticket vending machine, for example, we discovered that it had a huge "stomach" below, but no marking to indicate to blind persons where it actually started. The result was that blind users kept bumping into the machine. Now we have put a marking beneath the machine, which will be registered by the blind person’s stick. Our best "school" of all is watching how people - with and without disabilities – buy tickets, using our machines and other similar ones. We never stop learning from the users," concludes Mark Rocky.

Published in Crisp & Clear No. 4, December 2000