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ADA: How are ATM deployers preparing?

As the deadline looms, owners and operators should beware the Ides of March

January 27, 2012 by Suzanne Cluckey — Owner, Suzanne Cluckey Communications

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice issued Standards for Accessible Design, which included updates to the 1991 ADA standards for ATMs. The DOJ spent the next year clarifying the more ambiguous sections of the new regulations for anxious ATM makers and owners, who spent most of the year after that figuring out how to implement the guidelines.

There’s no way to reckon the number of ATMs in America that have achieved compliance with the new standards, which become law March 15. But a major uptick in the sales of upgrade kits and new and refurbished machines would seem to indicate that owners are taking the deadline seriously.

“The fourth quarter of 2011 was just a huge surge from our standpoint as far as the distributors and ISOs taking on the whole upgrade process,” said Dan Swain, vice president and general manager of ATMGurus. “There’s been an incredible in the uptick in demand and dialogue and chatter — everything is at a much-increased level.”

ATM owners have had to decide whether it makes more sense in the long run to refit or remove their older ATMs. Unfortunately, there is no simple equation for determining whether it’s better to replace a workhorse of an older machine at a cost of thousands, or bring it up to par at a cost of hundreds on the assumption that it won’t die a year later — or fall victim to a subsequent guideline that makes it obsolete.

This may explain why many operators have taken the new standards as a cue to bring their fleet into the 21st century. Community Trust Bank of Monroe, Louisiana, was one such case. Lonnie Scarborough, executive VP of retail banking at Community Trust, said the new guidelines made it easier to make a decision about outsourcing that the bank had been considering for years.

The bank contracted with long-time vendor Diebold for an integrated service plan that would allow them to lease the new machines and components they needed for ADA compliance. Outsourcing will cost the bank significantly more up front than simply upgrading and replacing machines, but the bank was “hedging our bets,” Scarborough said.

“It’s a 5-year agreement, and given the state of banking regulations these days, if something happens again, we’re covered,” he said. “The ATMs belong to them and they’re required to do the upgrades and we don’t have the cost anymore.”

According to Dean Stewart, senior director of advanced solutions product management for Diebold, most larger financial institutions have been prepared for the new standards for months. He thought that smaller FIs were either ready or close to it. “I think most are in some level of being prepared,” he said

“Most that I’ve talked to have some form of plan in place. They have looked over their fleet of ATMs and they understand their situation, whether they need to replace or upgrade … and they’re working towards it, but there might be some circumstances out there that would prevent them from completing it by March 15."

For some ISOs, the compliance process has presented hurdles, said Triton Systems VP of sales and marketing James Phillips. In some cases, progress toward compliance has been hampered by the sheer difficulty of figuring out what upgrades an ISO might need for different ATMs in the fleet. It’s a problem that can quickly be compounded when multiple acquired portfolios are involved.

“You might have an ISO dealing with this fleet of however many machines it is and they’re trying to determine, ‘What do I have? What are the models?’ And looking at the models and determining, ‘Okay, did it get upgraded by the manufacturer at some point to support these various aspects of the guidelines?’,” Phillips said. “And that’s where we worked with them pretty heavily to determine what upgrades are going to be required for the machines they have.”

He said other ISOs had been frustrated by retailers who owned machines that they serviced. In some cases the retailer simply could not be moved to spend the money required to bring its ATM up to standard, despite urgings and warnings from the ISO.

And what happens to those who miss the March 15 deadline? Nothing, possibly, since nobody will be policing ATMs to ensure that they’re up to the new ADA standards. But that doesn’t mean operators should think they can forego the cost of compliance. Phillips said there would be plenty of hungry lawyers looking for a non-conforming ATM and a disabled client willing to sue its owner. Slowpokes and scofflaws should especially Beware the Ides of March.

Please visit our ADA research center for more news and information about this topic.

About Suzanne Cluckey

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Suzanne’s editorial career has spanned three decades and encompassed all B2B and B2C communications formats. Her award-winning work has appeared in trade and consumer media in the United States and internationally.

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