The codes helping visually-impaired people shop
By Dougal Shaw
Business reporter, BBC News
Published
4 days ago
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media captionWATCH: How the colour codes work with your phone
A new, colourful kind of barcode technology, developed by a Spanish firm, is being adopted for the first time in food packaging in the UK.
It aims to help blind and partially-sighted people identify products in shops, and access health and safety information about food.
"I generally don’t go shopping anymore because I can’t do it without any kind of help," explains Beth Fowler, who is 19 years-old. "Because I can’t see, practically… most things."
She is a pupil at St Vincent’s School in Liverpool, a specialist school for people with sensory impairment.
"Shopping in supermarkets is a complete and utter pain," adds Marcia Shaw, 20, a recent graduate from the school, who is sight-impaired too. The store layouts keep changing, and you have to get help from assistants to find what you need, she explains.
But new technology is being rolled out that may help provide a solution to some of these problems.
The school has been [...]