How to Mark a Microwave for Someone Who Can't See the Buttons

Someone in r/Blind was trying to help their aunt. The aunt had been legally blind for a long time and her sight was getting worse. She could no longer read the time on her microwave, and a talking microwave was out of the family's budget.

If you're setting up a kitchen for a parent or partner whose sight is going, you know that problem. On a touchpad microwave the buttons are flat, printed grey on grey, and every one of them feels the same. The person using it needs to find the few they use without looking.

The answer that came back didn't try to fix the display. It was a few stick-on dots, and a way to set the time without reading it.

I have a bump dot on my microwaves +30 second option so every time I hit it it adds 30 seconds to the cooking time so if I need to heat something up for five minutes I just have to hit the button 10 times.

u/akrazyho, in r/Blind

Bump dots are small raised dots with adhesive on the back. Press one onto a button and a fingertip finds that button from then on. Blind and low-vision people have used them for years. Vision Australia's guide to the kitchen says they help people "identify different functions on microwaves and other appliances".

The dots are the easy part. Where to put them is the question, and the people who've answered it are the ones using them.

Ask them which buttons they use

Start with the person. Mandy Smith is an orientation and mobility specialist writing for an independent-living centre in Kansas, and the whole rule fits in one line. As long as you get "the person's feedback" and the buttons they need are marked, it's the right way.

A writer on a long-running vision-loss blog says the same from the other side of the counter. You "decide what is important to you, and just mark that."

So sit down together and watch how they heat things up. Most people use two or three buttons and never touch the rest. Those are the ones that get a dot.

Which buttons get a dot?

In r/Blind, someone whose sight had gone far enough that they couldn't see their microwave's touchpad asked where to put the dots. A keypad of numbers, plus about five other buttons. The replies agreed on a small core.

• Add 30 seconds. One reply asked whether the microwave had an option like "add a minute" or "add 30 seconds", because that's "the common one I put on". Press it a few times and most reheating is covered, which is what the aunt's relative was told.
• Start. Often it's the same button as add 30 seconds. One commenter has a dot on the start button, "which is also the add 30 seconds button".
• Stop or clear. Heather Lawson, a deafblind writer in Victoria, sticks raised dots "on top of the stop and start button" and leaves it there.
• The five on the number pad, if they punch in times. Put a dot on the 5 "and you can navigate side to side for the numbers", as one commenter in a different thread explained. The keypad is laid out like a phone, so the 5 anchors everything around it.

That's it for a lot of people. One commenter with retinitis pigmentosa has a dot on add 30 seconds and one on stop, and calls it "not the most efficient, but simplest".

How many is too many? People disagree. One reply recommends start, clear, add 30 seconds and the five, and warns that past "three or four bump dots it starts getting more confusing than helpful".

Another commenter in the same thread marks far more. Dots go on "2, 4, 6, 8, 0" plus start, add 30 seconds and popcorn. The unmarked buttons are then found by where they sit between the dots.

The vision-loss blog's own microwave carries dots on stop, start, the minute button, power, and five of the numbers.

There's no right number, only the one that fits the person using it. Mark what they use, leave the rest bare, and add a dot later if they ask for one. The leftover dots keep.

What if the microwave has a dial?

Some people keep to real buttons and dials on purpose. A totally blind commenter in that thread has them on everything, the microwave included, and either puts "dots around the dial" or sets a kitchen timer.

The trick that comes up for dials is two dots, not one. A writer at MacularDegeneration.net puts one on the dial itself and one on the base plate. "Then, you just have to line up the dots."

Another commenter puts one dot at the three-minute mark on a dial microwave, "to mark how far to turn". Pick the time they use most, and that's where the dot goes.

Make the dots feel different from each other

Once there's more than one dot, the person has to tell them apart by touch. The packs come in several sizes and shapes, and people use that.

One commenter in the strategies thread has "larger dots on the 1, 3 and 5", medium on start and stop, and small on power level.

Another uses the spongy kind that pop out of a perforated sheet, and cuts small squares from the leftover sheet for the start button, "so its different from the rest".

Someone with full sight turned up in the aunt's thread with the same trick. In the middle of the night they rub a hand over the panel, and "one bump is +60seconds". Two bumps is the light, three is the fan for the stove top. Count the bumps, find the button.

Clear dots or coloured ones?

If sighted people share the microwave, clear dots keep the printing readable. The person with low vision can still feel them. As the MacularDegeneration.net writer puts it, "People without vision impairment can see right through them to the original marking."

Clear is what people in r/Blind ask for, too. Someone who'd just bought a new microwave and could no longer read it wanted small, clear dots. One reply uses Loc-Dots clear "for the microwave and my keyboard". That thread is some years old now, and it's the only time anyone names a pack.

Coloured dots aren't wrong. The independent-living centre's own example microwave and oven are marked with black, white and orange dots. For someone with some sight left, ask them which they can still see.

Why not nail polish or puffy paint?

Nail polish is the thing most of us would reach for first. The specialist's page does list it, alongside velcro and puff paint, as things from around the house that can work.

The MacularDegeneration.net writer tried it on their mother's microwave.

The nail polish looked messy, and she couldn't even feel the nail polish at all.

Brown Eyed Girl, at MacularDegeneration.net

Puffy paint from a craft shop does better. It dries raised, so a finger can find it, and Vision Australia says it can "create the same effect" as a dot.

The people who use it reach for it where a dot won't do. One commenter uses puffy paint, with a sighted person's help, on "things that need more than a dot or don't seem to stay stuck on". It seems to last forever, they add. A dot is quicker to put on. Paint is for the button a dot keeps falling off.

What the dots won't do

A dot marks where a button is. It doesn't make the display readable, and that matters for the aunt in that thread, who couldn't tell what time she'd set. The answer in that thread was to count presses of add 30 seconds. The same commenter also suggested Be My Eyes, an app that puts a sighted volunteer on the phone's camera.

Dots also stop working when there are too many things to tell apart. One commenter in r/Blind used them on medicine bottles until there were "too many different medications to differentiate", and switched to braille on the caps. A microwave with three dots is fine. A cupboard of pill bottles isn't a job for dots.

Which pack to buy

The people in these threads mostly name shops, not packs. They buy from the catalogues that sell to blind people, like NFB's Independence Market, LS&S, Maxi-Aids and the Carroll Center's store. If you'd rather buy where they buy, start there.

On Amazon, two shapes of the same thing. The one pack anyone in r/Blind named is Loc-Dots clear, small and transparent. The retailer that carries them lists six to a pack, which is about one microwave's worth at the three-or-four-dot end.

The other is a big mixed pack like BLEWAY's bump dots, a mix of sizes, shapes and colours. That's what lets you put a large dot on start and a small one on stop, the way the people above do. Nobody in the threads names this pack, so it's the shape of the thing we're pointing at rather than a community favourite.

Take the dots round on your next visit and do it together at the counter. Ask which buttons they press, stick a dot on each of those and nothing else, and have them find every one by touch before you leave. Keep the rest of the pack. One person in r/Blind puts dots on "everything", their stove and oven included, so the oven is probably next.