Ageism.

[RANT]

We tend to think of discrimination in terms of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity but there are other protected classes here in Connecticut, the law states;

...discrimination against any person or group of persons on the grounds of race, color, religious creed, age, marital status, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender identity or expression, mental retardation, mental disability or physical disability…

Did you catch “age”?

Lots of people forget ageism… 

• “Okay Boomer”
• “We are looking for some new fresh voices.”

But there are other ways that people and things discriminate against older people and you never even think about them such using AI (Artificial Intelligence) employment applications some have been found to have built biases for race, sex and even age biases.

And I bet that you never even thought about touch screens.

I first noticed it back in the seventies, my mother used to get so flustered because she couldn’t turn on my turntable. I had (well actually I still have) a Philips GA 212 turntable and she could not turn it on, I walk over, just touch the controls and the it would start playing. What I found out was her finger tips didn’t have enough moister in them to operate the touch controls. I showed her that she had to breath on her fingers tips to make it work.

Fast forward fifty years.

Smartphone touchscreens.

They don’t work that good for seniors, as people age their skin gets drier and the touchscreens on phones work the same way as the Philips turntable, by capacitance.

They even have a name for it; Zombie Fingers!

Touchscreen trouble? It could be zombie finger
Here's why capacitive screens don't respond to every touch
Consumers Reports
Published: June 02, 2015

Some smartphone and tablet users are afflicted with a malady. No matter how hard they press on the display, they just can’t seem to get the device to acknowledge their touch. These people may have the same problem with laptop touchpads. In layman’s terms, they suffer from zombie finger.

“The capacitive touch sensor is—to most people—this kind of magical thing,” says Andrew Hsu, Ph.D., a pioneer in touchscreen tech at Synaptics, a major supplier of the technology to electronics manufacturers. “In an ideal situation, you barely touch the surface of the screen and the sensor is able to detect the presence of your finger.” In some cases, however, that finger confounds the technology.

“It’s a problem we’ve been wrestling with for 20 years now,” says Hsu. “It’s a very delicate balance. We spend a lot of time essentially trying to determine whether a user has touched the surface or not.”
[...]
So what should you do if you have zombie fingers? You might try licking your fingertip or, better yet, applying a water-based moisturizer to your hands. And, if you can’t bear to give up playing electric guitar or having designer nails, think about using a touchscreen stylus to funnel the electricity into your mitts.

Don’t have one handy? People in South Korea have discovered that a pork link will do the job. “There’s moisture in that sausage,” says Hsu. “So long as your body is in contact with it, it has enough conductivity to affect the electric field.”

What else can cause “Zombie Hands,” well according to Gabe’s Design Blog,

Thinking more broadly, it’s not just elderly people who might experience problems with touch screens, there are many others who could be affected by temporary or permanent conditions:

• People with poor circulation may have colder hands
• In the winter, cold and dry hands are more common, as is wearing gloves
• Healthcare workers wash their hands a lot and are more prone to dry hands
• People with diabetes or blood conditions may have cold hands
• Carpenters with callused hands
• Guitar players with callused fingers
• People with Anemia and low levels of iron may have colder hands
• Raynaud’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis causes cold hands
• A thyroid imbalance can cause cold hands and dry skin

I’ve reflected on this experience a number of times in my work as an experience designer and it’s stuck with me over the years. I feel it’s helped me design and create things more inclusively, and I hope it resonates with you.

Why this rant now?

Well this morning I went to swipe the touch screen and I had to swipe it a couple of times to get it to work. This morning it is cold outside and the air inside is dry, and my fingers are dry because I just wiped them with alcohol before I took my morning Blood Glucose reading, hence dry fingers. It brought me back to remembering my 80 year old mother’s problem with the turntable.

It is probably that the twenty something engineers never thought about to test, will it rise to the level of discrimination? Or will it just be an announce of getting older? Only the courts will know for sure. 

[/RANT]