IntelliAccess Kit

Fast-food chains moved ordering to self-service kiosks to shorten queues and free up staff. The staff who remain work the pickup counter, so a blind customer who can’t use the touchscreen has to wait for someone to come out and order for them. Kiosk accessibility is also turning into a compliance question: since June 2025 the European Accessibility Act has applied to self-service terminals in the EU, and China, where this concept is set, passed a national accessibility law in 2023.

IntelliAccess is a kit for the kiosks restaurants already own, not a new machine: an accessible screen mode, a handset and tactile parts that fit around an existing terminal.

Voice and screen reading meet different needs, and the Kano model shows how. Ordering by voice is an attractive feature: nobody expects to talk to a kiosk, and saying what you want is the fastest way to get it. Screen-reader navigation is a must-be feature. It rarely delights anyone, but without it some tasks simply fail: browsing a long menu, comparing two prices, swapping one item in a meal.

The difference is the cost of getting information. Speech is linear: options arrive one after another, in the order the agent chooses, and you can’t skim back. Touch is non-linear: you move around the menu, compare and return, at your own pace. Voice is best for saying what you want; touch is best for choosing between what you’re offered. So the kit keeps both, and makes them work as one.

The lower half of the screen is a fixed 3×5 grid that works like a phone’s screen reader: swipe or tap to move, double-tap to confirm. Its size and position never change, so the hand learns it after one order. What changes is the content. Ask for a burger meal for one and the agent fills the grid with matching meals and says so; choose one and the grid turns into its options, with a row each for mains, sides and drinks.

Voice and touch drive one shared state. Every turn of the agent returns both what to say and what to put in the grid, so whatever the customer hears is already under their fingers, and either way of ordering can pick up where the other left off. Each kind of cell has its own sound, and the focus frame flashes as it moves, for customers who can see light.

With a screen reader, attention starts where the hand is, on the grid. So the screen reads from the bottom up: actions along the bottom edge, the grid above them, then the name and price, then a large photo, and the agent’s status at the top. Every button that could crowd or shift the grid was removed, along with promotions and decoration. Black, white and one yellow carry the whole interface, and the photo stays large for customers with low vision.

The top bar, called the Glow, brightens and pulses while the agent listens and speaks, which most people with sight loss can still perceive as light. It also shows staff at a glance what is happening, and swiping it down opens a staff panel.

The kit’s switch is a handset. ATMs in the US and Korea start their audio mode when you plug in headphones, but customers in China rarely carry wired ones. A handset asks nothing of the customer: it chimes so it can be found, lifting it starts the accessible mode and signals that someone may need help, and letting go returns it on a retracting cable.

Sound also guides the hand where the screen ends. At checkout, a trail of rising tones leads the finger off the glass onto tactile strips that run to the payment scanner and to a stand of braille number slips. The number goes on the order, and staff bring the meal to the table.

The kit is designed end to end, from the voice flow to the hardware, but it hasn’t been tested with blind or partially sighted customers yet. The first test would be small and specific: five to eight screen-reader users order a set meal on a working prototype, without help. What it measures matters to both the customer and the restaurant:

• orders completed without staff;
• time to order, against ordering with a member of staff;
• when people switch between voice and touch;
• a short Kano survey, to check where voice and touch really sit.

Accessible design tends to help everyone, so the same test would include older customers who find kiosks hard to use.