Abstract
Individuals with visual impairments are forced to rely on memorizing the contents of medication instructions and accurately identifying their desired medication by its form, due to the difficulty or impossibility of reading medication notebooks or pharmaceutical information sheets provided by pharmacists. This is particularly challenging for external preparations, which cannot be individually packaged (single-dosed), and there are challenges in supporting the proper use of these topical formulations. This study aims to enable individuals with visual impairments to identify and obtain information on medications by designing touching tactile labels that can be identified or provide information through touch. To design touching tactile labels, sensory tests were conducted with both sighted individuals and those with visual impairments. The evaluation samples varied in label size and shape, font type and color, and the shape, thickness, and surface treatment of the raised design on the surface, evaluating the legibility of numbers by vision, the recognizability of the raised design by touch, and the accuracy of information obtained through hearing from an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) app reading. Based on these test results the tactile labels were considered to support the proper use of topical formulations.
https://ror.org/05hj3gh79 
