That's just bad UI design - the developers design the interface as if they were sat in front of a regular screen and using a mouse. And UI design there isn't particulary good either. It doesn't help that most touchscreen drivers for most OS's basically convert the touchscreen input into mouse input - hence relying on the UI elements provided for mice.

If you wanted to design a sight-'free' touchscreen interface (or for that matter, sight-'free' mouse-driven interface, then you'd only use 5 zones/buttons per screen - the four corners and the middle. If you really need more buttons for some screens then add the middle of the 4 screen edges as zones.

As for feedback, it's possible to use other non-tactile feedback - an audible click, flash the screen bright for brief moment so that your peripheral vision picks it up, or use obviously different color schemes for different functions for the same reason.

Don't blame the touchscreen itself - assuming that it works of course. It's going to take a few years before UI designers 'Get It' on a wide scale, much as it took a while before mouse UI's got useful. (And Micro$oft still don't have that right). One thing that could be done to the touchscreen is to add a tactile dot marker at the corners and middle point of each edge to help 'blind' fingers locate them.