Helping blind people.

Some years ago, when I was still a university student studying Electronics, a problem was

identified with blind people, who needed a portable machine to detect currency in bills.

In my country there is an institution for blind people known as the Hellen Keller Institute,

in which care is given to this population.

The Storytelling tool was used to gain a better understanding of what this group of people

really needed.

A visit was made to the Hellen Keller Institute to propose a meeting with some blind

people so that through some stories told by them of a certain problem they were

experiencing in terms of being vulnerable to fraud, they would discuss the need for these

people in terms of detecting counterfeit bills and thus avoiding robberies and deception of

this population when they charge for the jobs and services they perform for their daily

sustenance. Something that would also lead them to feel a state of independence in terms

of asking for help from other people with good visual health to detect counterfeits and

would give them more confidence and autonomy in themselves.

To gain the trust of the participants, I told them a story about a friend who had been

scammed and had a very expensive radio recorder stolen from him. How he felt bad for

having fallen into a trap which had also generated a loss of self-confidence and how this

that happened to my friend motivated me to think about doing something for people

vulnerable to scams and so on. The idea of a ticket detection machine for blind people

was born.

The meeting was held with seven blind people, who had had problems when unscrupulous

people had paid them with false bills, causing a significant financial loss for them.

These people commented that although they had checked the banknotes, the copies were

so good that they passed the touch test as if they were real banknotes. Also, the smell test

since the banknotes have a certain aroma, things that a person with normal eyesight does

not have in mind.

On the other hand, information was sought from banknote detection machines, which led

to the knowledge that banknote detection machines at that time were only capable of

detecting a single type of banknote and, furthermore, they were made to be used only by

people they have no visual problems.

One of the main underlying problems is that there are several denominations of

banknotes, which must be correctly identified so that blind people can recognize whether

it is a real banknote or a counterfeit.

The questions revealed missing elements for the creation of a device which would help

with the solution of the problem. Listening to the stories told by these people helped

them to be able to think like a blind person, that is, to put themselves in the place of the

blind person and see their world from their same perspective in order to solve the

problem.

With the needs presented by this group of blind people, it was possible to understand

more about the problems they face every day, and it was possible to think about the

design of a prototype to try at least to cover all the needs exposed as a group, making the

necessary adjustments that allowed it to function and could help blind people to be less

prone to scams.

