These vending machines, which are Braille-enabled, allow the sight impaired to buy soft drinks by themselves under a collaboration between the Malaysian Association for the Blind (MAB) and F&B vending operator Atlas Vending (AV).

The machines include Braille plates, indicator lights and motion-sensor triggered audio instructions.

AV marketing head Amy Gan said the company aims to improve facilities for those with special needs to enable them to gain access and improve their purchasing experience.

“Details such as the speed of the audio instructions and indicator light colours are crucial guides to help us improve the physical design and software features,” she said in a joint statement with the MAB.

The first Braille vending machine was installed on May 28. To date, there are 11 of such machines at LRT stations in the Klang Valley, including in the Brickfields area, where the MAB is based.

MAB chief executive officer George Thomas said the association’s aim is to educate and create equal opportunities for the visually impaired.

“People do not realise that without (suitable) technology, the visually impaired face limitations when performing simple tasks that sighted people can do, such as purchasing a canned drink without assistance,” he said.

AV also made a RM10,000 donation to the MAB’s Covid-19 campaign fund, which aims to help the blind community, especially those facing unemployment due to the pandemic.

Citing the health ministry’s National Eye Survey, MAB said the prevalence of low vision among Malaysia’s population is 2.44% while blindness is at 0.29%. This means that 800,000 Malaysians could be partially sighted, whereas almost 95,000 are blind.