Talking Labels Aid the Blind with Prescriptions

A pharmacist affixes an electronic tag to the bottom of each pill bottle. This talking label, based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, can read back most if not all the instructions printed on the conventional label.

You can access the Spoken Rx tool inside the Pharmacy section of the CVS Pharmacy app. When you tap the icon and then hold a tagged prescription within 4 inches of your phone, you’ll hear everything read out loud in a synthesized computer voice. To avoid confusion, the full drug name is read with no abbreviations, says Jared Tancrelle, senior vice president of retail operations at CVS Health.

ScripTalk has its own free dedicated app, in addition to a free battery-operated ScripTalk Station, which is about the size of an old portable CD player. ScripTalk Station has a wheel that lets you turn it on and adjust the volume, along with tactile buttons for playing the audio, skipping through the information or jumping back.

You have two options if you use the ScripTalk mobile app: selecting an onscreen Full Scan button at the top of the app or a Quick Scan button. The Full Scan button reads everything on the label, including drug name, dosage, warnings, refill info. The Quick Scan button will read only the prescription name and dosage.

With an iPhone facing up, you typically place the medication bottle with the sticker facing down on the top of the screen. On Android, you will instead place the phone face down and the bottom of the bottle on the backside of the handset.

The phone will read the electronic tag, though you may have to move the bottle around before the app starts reading the label. Indeed, to use any smartphone app, a blind person must be somewhat proficient in use of accessibility tools on the device to open the app and determine where to tap.

Not for over-the-counter drugs

One drawback to these talking RFID labels is that they’re generally used for prescriptions only, and not for over-the-counter drugs.

“This one area of our advocacy has been the most challenging,” Bridges says. “Obviously, we wanted to focus first on prescription drugs because they’re the most critical to our own health.”

Neva Fairchild, national aging and vision loss specialist at the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), uses the CVS app and sometimes braille labels for prescription drugs.

“You’d be amazed how much an ibuprofen feels like an iron pill feels like an allergy pill,” she says.

Pharmacist-recorded solution

Other companies offer additional solutions. Walgreens stores have a Talking Pill Reminder that is free for people who self-identify as visually impaired. It costs about $10 otherwise.

Dosing directions and label information that a pharmacist records are played back when you push a button on a Talking Pill Reminder, which attaches to the bottom of most prescription vials. It can record up to a 30-second description.

The Seeing AI app for the iPhone from Microsoft can read aloud the short text it sees in front of the phone’s camera, including what appears on a prescription bottle. The versatile app has other functions, such as identifying people and the denominations on currencies.

“The reason I find [Seeing AI] particularly useful is you don’t have to specifically know where the text is if you’re trying to scan a pill bottle,” Aaron Preece says. He's editor-in-chief of AccessWorld, AFB’s technology magazine.

An extra set of eyes

But some people want to hear from a human being who can assist them in real time. For example, the free Be My Eyes app connects a blind person with a sighted volunteer from around the world who can read the label on his or her behalf. Through a live video connection, the sighted person tells the visually impaired individual how to position the smartphone camera so the sighted person can report what he or she sees.  

“We have 5.4 million people who are ready to read a label any time you need it,” says Will Butler, chief experience officer at Be My Eyes. But “we have to be a little bit careful that we’re not connecting people with strangers who help them manage their prescriptions. Our terms of service are pretty clear about not using Be My Eyes for anything that could be unsafe.”

If you need more than just a label read, Be My Eyes lets you call into a participating specialized pharmacy through the app, notably Accessible Pharmacy Services and Rite Aid. To get there, you open the Be My Eyes app, enter the Specialized Help menu and locate the pharmacy in the Personal Health category.

Be My Eyes is similar to a “visual interpreting” service called Aira from Aira Tech Corp in Carlsbad, California. The main difference: All the human agents a blind person connects with on Aira are professionally trained. On Be My Eyes, the only ones who are professionally trained are the Specialized Help agents who represent specific companies.

Customers get up to five minutes a day with the Aira agent for free, which might be all they need to identify the medications they’re taking. If the need arises, you can pay for additional minutes with plans that start at $29 for up to a half hour.

“A lot of people will use us for their prescription labels,” says Jenine Stanley, director of customer communication at Aira. “The other thing that they use it for is, 'I dropped this pill and I have no idea what it is,' or 'I found this pill in the drawer and have no idea what it is.' Our agents can take a picture of that pill, blow it up to see the number on it or any writing and go out and research that.

Agents are bonded and must sign confidentiality agreements so that the low-vision person’s information is kept private and secure.