Abstract
Consuming is an important aspect of our lives. It is part of our lifestyle. People with disabilities and the elderly, however, face problems in everyday transactions in shops, ATMs, vending machines, etc. This chapter focuses on presenting the potential technological applications and suggested policies that might help to overcome many of those problems. Issues and technologies related with the shopping experience, consuming services, using ATMs and vending machines, and also related lifestyle trends that might affect accessibility are presented and analyzed in order to provide the reader with the big picture on how accessibility solutions could become mainstream and used by greater audiences.
TopShopping in large stores may these be super markets, utility stores, toy stores etc. is an experience with many similarities across the areas. People when entering such a store select a trolley or some kind of basket to collect their products to buy. They browse through large aisles tagged with large signs categorizing products under specific categories. While browsing them, they may use a shopping list or just grab whatever attracts their attention and they need drop it to the trolley or basket and continue. In other cases they might stand in front of shelves with similar products from different brands and compare prices, product characteristics displayed in labels in order to decide whether to buy or not each product. In some cases they might also grab a product, examine its package, physical properties, information on the package etc. in order to decide buying it or not. Finally they usually exit the shop after paying in cash or using credit cards in a cashier.