The Helpful Braille Snack Machine

The duh design award of the day goes to whomever designed this one! I should really come up with some sort of logo/certificate to hand out. Anyway... A woman I work with comes over to my desk hardly able to contain her giggling. Of course she comes to me knowing I raise the stupid flag in laughter a lot and I am going to get what she's about to tell me immediately. See, we've just moved in to a newly outfitted floor in our building complex and they put in a brand new snack machine for us in the kitchen. Nice! Well... this wonderful new snack machine has braille on the buttons of the number pad. Now, one of the guys, upon hearing our conversation of "Oh My God Robin, come look, there's braille on the snack machine!" smartly says "well yea, blind people need snacks too!" (Smart butt's about to get kicked.) My friend and I respond to his logical thought of the day with laughing even harder at him! So we take him over to the machine to take a little look-see.

Yes, so very nice of them to put braille on the snack machine for the 3 o'clock hungry blind person, who, um, can't see by the way. We ask him... Ok, How would a blind person know what's IN THE MACHINE? How would they pick their snack? Oh logical snack machine creators, do tell us your thoughts on this one! Our friend stares at us. Thinking logically, he goes "OH! I bet if you punch in a number it will tell you what's in that slot." Good thinking! That would solve knowing what's in there and since it changes frequently, that makes sense. He tries to punch in some numbers. For instance, 111 is the first slot. Ding #2, oh logical snack designer who did not use letters and numbers like A1. No dice, the machine doesn't talk and there's no way 111 makes any sense as the first slot number to try. It does however helpfully display .60 on the extremely contrasted little LED display. (That will help them see it!) Seriously?!? What were they thinking on this one?

So the moral of the story is... a)We laugh a lot at work! and b)If you're at work and you're blind and snack hungry, you can't eat actually eat anything unless someone else is with you, pretty much at least once a week, but... we're oh so thankful they were kind enough to let you play the slots with a number pad.

So my thought for the day is... blind people HAVE to be or learn to be smarter than the sighted! P.S. Check out something that makes me laugh every time I see it. Next time you pull up to a drive through ATM machine, look down at the braille on the key pad.
Lata'