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Reading bank 19 © Oxford University Press
Touch screens
With tablets and smartphones, plastic keyboards seem a 
bit old-fashioned. So what’s next for touch screens?
Today’s touch screens are made of glass. They’re flat like glass, and a bit cool like 
glass. If you’re used to typing on a traditional keyboard, you may think touch screen 
typing isn’t as nice. You don’t feel a click when you press a key (though you can 
choose to hear one). Many people say this is a small problem compared with the 
great benefits of touch screen keyboards: they’re lightweight, easy-to-clean, and they 
disappear when you aren’t using them. 
Touch screens are here to stay, but researchers at a company called Tactus say that 
people like to feel things more – that while touch screens are beautiful, real buttons 
are more user-friendly. These researchers are working to create ‘tactile’ touch screens 
– flat screens that can create raised buttons that users can temporarily feel. Small 
areas of the plastic screen ‘inflate’ and then return to a flat surface. This sort of 
screen is still probably a few years away, but research and development teams are 
already working hard at producing it. 
The feeling of buttons may be just the beginning. Another team of researchers has 
announced a technology called REVEL that can create not only the feeling of a raised 
area, but also different textures, for example rough wood or smooth cloth. At the 
moment, this technology works only when the finger is moved across the screen. In 
this case, the screen itself doesn’t change. It works by attaching a small electrical 
signal generator to a person’s chair, or perhaps the inside of their shoe. When they 
touch certain objects, a small electrical signal travels through the body, and a small 
electrostatic force is created where the finger touches the screen. This creates the 
illusion of feeling.
These two technologies will be useful not only in smartphones and tablets, but also in 
games, navigation equipment, and controls on electrical appliances. 
So, what’s the future of the touch screen? It turns out it may be something you can 
feel, like an old-fashioned keyboard.
 14 information 
technology
1 Do you own or have you used 
any gadgets with a touch screen? 
If so, what do you like about 
touch screen technology? Is there 
anything you don’t like about it?
2 Answer the questions. 
1 Find four adjectives in the text 
that describe today’s touch 
screens.
a f 
b c 
c l 
d e - -c 
2 What does Tactus say is the 
advantage of real buttons over 
touch screens? 
3 What material will tactile screens 
be made from? 
4 What creates the feeling of 
texture in REVEL technology?
5 What does the Tactus screen do 
that the REVEL screen doesn’t do?
6 What are the possible applications 
of this technology? 
3 What’s your favourite piece of IT 
equipment to use? Why do you 
like it?