By Ken Weeks

I am writing today to talk about the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and its new standards and conditions being imposed on industrial controls and ATM/kiosk manufacturers.

In discussions with our customers involved in the ATM industry, we get a lot of feedback regarding the guidelines and policies the manufacturers must adhere to, and that require we as a supplier must also adhere to, as well as research, understand and ultimately develop technology to support.

This commentary is meant to garnish input and stimulate dialogue in that area to help not only us, but similar companies and manufacturers also facing the same daunting and costly but necessary task of building an ADA compliance strategy.

The ADA imposes a set of standards on manufacturers of devices that require public human contact: elevator control buttons, ATM entry screens, kiosk control panels and others. These new standards require certain areas of adherence for the ATM such as height, reach, accessibility, floor space, speech, functional/tactile controls, key order/layout, Braille instructions and much more.

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The date this act goes into law is March 15, 2012, so ATM manufacturers have a deadline to meet and the race is on.

ATM manufacturers now have to face the issue of either upgrading their existing ATMs to ADA compliance standards, or replacing them with new ones manufactured to those standards, as there is no grandfathering clause.

A whole slew of cottage companies are springing up to do ATM upgrades, trade-ins, replacements, etc., in order to help companies meet the deadline.

It is worthy to note that a significant share of ATMs in the field are already or near ADA compliant because most ATM manufacturers started to proactively produce compliant ATMs a few years ago.

Failure to comply to these new standards by the deadline date can result in fines of up to $55,000 for the first offense, and possibly double that amount for subsequent offenses — that’s a very costly scenario ATM owners and manufacturers must face, especially since it is estimated that there are more than 400,000 ATMs in use today in the U.S.

What are the ATM manufacturers doing to adhere to this new legislation, and what have peripheral supplier companies done to support these manufacturers on this as well?

Here at F-Origin we are diligently researching these new guidelines and how we can develop our product roadmap strategy to comply with the new ADA legislation.

Although cost is a factor in order to meet these new regulations, planning ahead and implementing upgrades efficiently could save you quite a bit of money and prevent you from costly legal issues in the future.

F-Origin’s opinion is that doing the cost analysis factoring up front in the budgetary phase will help you avoid legal scenarios and save you money, not only up front, but also in the long run.

We would like to hear from you. Please share your ideas, strategies and business experiences with the new ADA guidelines and how you support ATM manufacturers with best practices for ADA compliance.

Ken Weeks is the sales manager at F-Origin, a touchscreen technology solutions provider for the ATM, kiosk, medical and gaming industries, among others.