Interacting with a touchscreen

["Boudreaux, Madelyn (GE Healthcare, consultant)" <MadelynBoudreaux -at- ge -dot- com>]

I'm trying to institute using unique and appropriate verbs for
interacting with different input devices in documents: press a key,
click an on-screen button, etc., so that a user never has to wonder
which device is being referenced when she sees a given verb. 

Unfortunately, we have some devices that have certain buttons on a
touchscreen, and we can't come to a consensus of the best word. (Of
course, this is complicated by some -- but not all -- buttons/keys being
in more than one location...)

My first choice, "tap" can't be used because it refers (somewhat
colloquially but in an ingrained manner) to a procedure using a foot
switch, so it can't be used.  

"Touch," is, in the words of one person, "creepy." There are no more
good touches, only bad ones, I guess. To be fair, I hate it in this
usage; it's so very passive sounding, even in conjunction with
"touchscreen."

I had wanted to preserve "click" for onscreen buttons and "press" for
keys on a keyboard or other external keypad (of which we have both, of
course, the latter being something like those pads you see attached to
hospital beds by a long curly cord), but after 30 minutes of
brainstorming, we were right back to click and press, with nothing else
seeming right. "Select" and "choose" were both floated, but those both
strike me as useful only in the case of an actual choice among equal
options, although not everyone agreed. 

Does anyone have a magic word for me? 

Please, and thank you (my other magic words for the day...)!

Sincerely,
Madelyn Boudreaux

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