Analysis of Tactile Display Designs on Philippine Money for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, at least 2.2 billion people have a vision impairment or blindness. In the Philippines, the number of people who are bilaterally blind was estimated at 332,150 from a report of the Department of Health in 2017. These number of people face a lot of challenges when living independently, one of which is handling money. The aim of the study is to analyze the effectiveness in aiding the blind and visually impaired of the current Philippine banknote together with four other tactile designs. A tactile test with the goal of identifying a specific banknote and discriminating between banknotes was conducted with twenty blindfolded participants. Metrics of the test include: (1) number of banknotes incorrectly identified and discriminated, and (2) average time of correctly identifying and discriminating banknotes, for each tactile design. Two-way Analysis of Variance and the Fisher’s LSD tests were used to analyze the results of the test.