The Power Of Touch: How to Design for Accessibility with the Use of UV Ink and Coating Technologies

Elizah Revilla and Julia Murray
Nov 13, 2020
3 min read

Updated: Nov 20, 2020

When you enter a grocery store, you can “see” the shelves brimming with packages that have different shades of color, shapes, and fonts, but how do you design in a way that ensures accessibility for those who may have visual impairments?

The question can easily be answered in four words - UV inks and coatings!

In an earlier blog post, we briefly outlined the environmental benefits of UV inks in comparison to traditional oil-based inks. However, a less discussed and even lesser known benefit of UV inks is the ability to provide accessibility to those with visual impairments when viewing packaging designs.

What are UV Inks and Coatings?

UV inks and coatings are applied as a liquid but turn into a solid film when exposed to UV light. UV light or Ultraviolet light falls between visible light and X-rays on the electromagnetic spectrum. UV light is provided by powerful lamps that emit the required wavelength of UV light. Energy curable or UV Inks and coatings are made to react to a specific wavelength of light. The ink and coating absorb energy from UV light, which triggers a chemical reaction and converts the light into a solid form [6].

Ultra-violet (UV) light technology has been around since the 1960s. Approximately sixty years ago, UV coatings weren't really used for tactile, sensory, or aesthetic purposes! Instead, it was used as furniture coatings as protection because the technology was very limited in its applications. Today, UV technology is used as a protective coating to prevent scratches, fingerprints, and tearing, however, they now have more applications such as to enhance ink, and provide added value and a sensory aspect to printed products, [4]

UV inks and Accessibility in Packaging Design

Humans have 5 senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.

Out of the 5 senses, sight and touch are senses that give us a greater experience. Our sight/eyes enable us to navigate the world and tell the difference between, for example, a square and circle or red from green. However, according to WHO, 285 million people have visual impairments, so how can they navigate their surroundings?

The answer is they rely on their other senses, such as touch! Touch is a sense that provides a tactile perception of an object’s texture in the terms of its size, shape, and thickness. In fact, human skin is an organ that is responsible for touch sensation, and throughout our body, there are sensory neurons that enable us to feel things. Our fingertips have plenty of sensory neurons so when we touch objects with our hands, we easily recognize the object without looking at it. [1]

The role of UV inks and coatings plays a role in haptics' sensory perception of packaging. Though, UV Coatings are mainly used to make printed products more visually appealing and are usually used to highlight areas that are meant to catch the eye of the viewer. It can also be used for braille or to add texture to a product. Speaking of texture, a study published in Consciousness and Cognition Journal by Marina Iosifyan and Olga Korolkova, found that certain emotions can be distinguished with texture by touch[2]. In the study, participants touched different textures and associated them with six emotional scales - sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise, and happiness.

An example is when you feel a rough surface or a smooth surface. Smooth surfaces are pleasant which can relate to an emotion of happiness while rough surfaces are unpleasant which brings emotions of fear or disgust. These findings revealed that people are associated with touching different textures with distinct emotions. In essence, touch is more than a tactile perception - it can also stimulate certain moods, attitudes, and emotions.

The Big Picture

The world of design and graphic printing is indeed vast and constantly in motion.

Innovation in the Print and Graphic Arts industry is a vital driving force for improving the overall interaction of end-users to numerous packages. With new technologies, textures are replicable through various applications of UV and energy curable technologies.

Whether rough, smooth, matte, glittered, or alligator skin texture, with UV and energy curable printing inks and coatings, many types of textures are made achievable which can be incorporated as specialty value for packaging designs providing meaningful experiences to end-users [3].

What Comes Next?

Next week, we discuss the environmental benefits of adopting water-resistant coatings in the place of traditional plastic containers in order to achieve moisture resistance.