Pregnancy Test for Blind Women Puts Moment-of Results Within Reach

For many women, finding out they’re pregnant is a deeply personal moment. But for those who are blind or visually impaired, that experience often depends on someone else reading the result—stripping away privacy and leaving what should be their own discovery, out of their hands.

Enter AMY, a saliva-based pregnancy test prototype designed for blind women. Created by Leah Shanahan, a University of Limerick graduate student, AMY is a first-of-it’s-kinda reusable and multisensory pregnancy test, delivering results through touch, sight and sound. Users feel a raised plus or minus symbol on the reader, tap their phone to open a high-contrast result page with large text or have the results read aloud to them using a screen reader.

Leah, who is legally blind in one eye and has limited sight in the other, drew on her own experience and worked closely with the blind community to learn what would serve them best. “When I realised that blind and visually impaired women were the only group excluded from the intimate moment of discovering their own pregnancy, I wanted to create a product that restores independence and dignity in this experience,” Leah told the Irish Independent..

While AMY is the first saliva-based accessible test with three reading options, it’s not the first prototype for a pregnancy test for blind people. The RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) in the UK developed a pee-based tactile test prototype that uses raised bumps to indicate results and is currently in talks with Clear Blue pregnancy tests to make the design a reality. The APT (Accessible Pregnancy Test), developed by an MIT-based design team, delivers results through vibrations—one vibration for negative, two for positive—after reading a traditional pee-based test strip.

Whether through touch, sound or sight, together, these innovative prototypes point to a future where blind and visually impaired parents-to-be no longer have to rely on others in one of life’s most defining moments.