From the start of 2022, blind and partially sighted UK breakfast cereal shoppers are in for a bit of a welcome surprise: at last, they’ll easily get nutrition and other information from their Kellogg’s Coco Pops via a technology that’s come to the fore during the pandemic, but which many of them have historically struggled with—a QR code but now developed to be a NaviLens code.
Invented in 1994 to make Japanese factories more efficient, and essentially a successor to both the barcode (1952) and the datamatrix (1987), the QR, or Quick Response, code is often seen as too small or too fiddly to work with by the blind and partially sighted community.
But as a fascinating new webinar reveals, there’s been a lot of recent innovation, including complementing their use with so-called short number SMS messaging and adding colours and developing a QR to NaviLens so it’s more easily accessible, that may change this dramatically.
The resource—part of the second day of AbilityNet’s recent three-day TechShare Pro 2021 conference, and which was presented as an AbilityNet webinar on the next day, the 18th of November—is accessible here on YouTube.
A deep dive into all things QR code and accessibility, the online meet, which is nearly an hour long, was hosted by UKAAF chair Roger Firman, and features two main expert speakers: Matthew Cock from VocalEyes, and Javier Pita, CEO of a Spanish tech company called NaviLens.
To set the scene, Roger points out that, “With apps on smartphones, these codes are far easier to find on packaging and elsewhere.
“But that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily very easy to use if you’re blind or partially sighted, so it’s quite interesting that in a time when there is emerging technology in other areas to see whether QR codes evolve, or whether they take more of a back seat.” A key obstacle: locating them, and invariably many people will need help to find them and some confirmation they have found them correctly.
Quo Vadis, QR?
The two speakers explained how pushing the envelope on the traditional QR code will make it more useful for blind and visually impaired people: in Matthew’s organisation’s case, primarily to encourage arts organisations to create audio description and other access initiatives for theatres, museums, and heritage sites in the UK, and in Javier’s work, a range of use cases around making a NaviLens code much more scannable and interactive with a user’s mobile phone. (In fact, it’s his company’s tech which is to be imminently rolled out in the cereal aisle).
Roger asks each to explain his value proposition and how their endeavours make these codes more useful to blind and partially sighted users, with a short demo from Javier of its use on the Barcelona public transport system. The webinar then pivots to a very in-depth 30 minutes of panel discussion and, finally, questions from attendees.
Is a QR conclusion arrived at? For UKAAF, it’s that with extensions, NaviLens can become a universal standard that can help everyone in society, these innovations will have to be part of that.
Not convinced? Check out the interesting debate here, and make up your own mind!
(Thanks again to AbilityNet for setting up the conference, too.)
