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Testing voice guidance capability to comply with ADA is about to get a whole lot easier

July 11, 2011 by Ian Kerr — CEO, Level Four

The U.S. Department of Justice has issued a final ruling on new accessibility standards under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which need to be adhered to by March 15, 2012. The Final Rule imposes new standards around ATM accessibility, including requirements on voice guidance, height and reach, layout and touch of keypad, screen visibility and Braille instructions.

To meet the 2012 deadline, updates to ATM terminals and software are likely to be required as part of the overall compliance plan. As with any change to ATM functionality, it’s important to remember the 'change anything, test everything' rule.

At the moment, testing voice guidance functionality on an ATM is a laborious process. It involves someone physically sitting at the machine with headphones on and testing that every single voice command matches the screen display.

Because this is such a time intensive and manual process, it’s something which, up until now, banks have probably not put as much focus on as they should. But, as voice guidance becomes a requirement and all U.S. machines carry the functionality, testing needs to be carried out as part of the process, just as is the case with any update.

Left un-tested, errors and glitches are more likely to occur further down the line and these errors are not only costly to repair, but when a customer encounters the error or an out of service ATM, they make assumptions on the reputation of the bank or ATM owner in question.

I was recently in the U.S. meeting with customers, prospects and partners and told them about some exciting developments in terms of a voice guidance testing capability being added to Level Four’s Regression Test Manager. These are currently in R&D stage, but automating the voice guidance testing capability will make the job of complying with this final ruling on ADA a whole lot simpler and will mean that ATM owners will reduce the risk of problems once the service has gone live.

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