Capstone Tactile Pill Bottles

Not long a go I wrote an article on Revolve, a concept pill bottle design for people with limited use of their hand and/or have memory problems. Today I’m writing about concept pill bottles designed for people who are blind or visually impaired. These pill bottles called Capstone, are brightly colored with tactile lids. The Capstone pill bottles were designed by University of Cincinnati design students Alex Broerman and Ashley Ma.

Put a Tactile Lid On It
The main feature that makes Capstone pill bottles unique are their tactile lids. Eight different textures such as ribbed lines,  mini scoops, rough stone, and dots are available (the pictures above and below are of the lids before color was added). This way a user can identify their medication by the feel of the lid. You may ask why not use a braille system. Well as my blind friend has told me, only 10% of people who are blind know how to read braille. This is due to many factors including becoming blind at an older age, lack of resources to be taught, and better text to speech technology. Now my friend can read braille and believes it’s a useful skill to have but the point still is that the vast majority of people with blindness cannot read braille.

Top and Body
The other accessible feature on the lids are the bright  colors. Which is helpful for people with low vision to quickly identify the bottles. The older we get, the less we see in color. So the use of bright and contrasting colors can be easier to distinguish. The lids are also hinged to the bottle so they are always attached. Preventing misplaced lids or ones that fall off the table and into the abyss. As a final fail safe, an audio message of what’s in the bottle can be announced with the push of a button on the lid. The bottles themselves have a wide body with large mouth openings. This feature allows a user to open up the bottle and pick out pills instead of lifting the bottle and shaking the pills into their hand.

Conclusion and a PC Message
Capstone is a well thought out and well researched concept design. So good in fact that Broerman and Ma have applied for a patent on their design. For more on Capstone visit this UC article or Ashley Ma’s blog. Also a final note on word usage. The UC article mentions a few times how people “suffer” from blindness. Many people who are blind live very happy and normal lives and don’t consider being blind as suffering. They’re just people who happen to be blind. The same can be said for other disabilities. Yes it’s another PC thing but as I always say it’s a respect thing.