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Access For All

A meeting later this month in Washington, D.C. aims to address the problems and challenges of making ATMs more accessible to the blind community.

February 10, 2002

On Jan. 26, a select group of banking industry officials, ATM professionals and blind advocacy groups will come together at a private meeting in Washington, D.C. The meeting is being hosted by the American Bankers Association, and the agenda will be the ongoing effort to make ATMs more accessible to the blind community.

According to Nessa Feddis, senior federal counsel for the American Bankers Association, roughly 30 people have been invited to the meeting. "ATM representatives -- the major vendors like NCR and Fujitsi and Triton -- E*TRADE will be there, a number of different bankers, ATM software makers, and a couple of ATM networks," she says. "And of course the blind representatives such as the National Federation of the Blind, and the American Council of the Blind.

"We're trying to find out where we've got common ground, and try to work off that, because at this point the industry is certainly willing to go along with making ATMs provide some sort of voice," says Feddis. "There are some options, and some difficulties. For instance, you might not be able to easily provide account balances -- so we need to find out how necessary that is, given that you can currently call on the telephone and get your account balance."

Banks and ATM manufacturers have been largely prompted to work on this issue by a handful of lawsuits filed since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted roughly 10 years ago.

"I would love to see a good, strong direction for federal guidelines that are more mature than the ones that we currently have, and that stand a chance of superceding some of the state regulatory developments that have occurred in the last few years," says Ernest Burdette, president and CEO of Triton Systems. "For us as a manufacturer doing business all across the country, it's a bit frustrating to have to deal with different requirements in different jurisdictions. I think it can work to the advantage of all of us."

"Our short term hope [for this meeting] would be that we can come together as an industry and with members of the blind community to develop a set of operating standards that can accommodate the needs of the blind, but do so in a way that is economically viable," according to Tim Walker, assistant counsel for E*TRADE Access, the ATM-operating subsidiary of E*TRADE Bank. "That involves regulatory questions, but primarily technology -- fundamentally, it's a technology problem.

"E*TRADE Access is committed to providing fair and equal access to everybody," Walker says, "but we need to be able to do it in such a way that it works over the complicated network structure of ATMs. The ATM network infrastructure has been in place for a very long time, and a lot of it is not exactly cutting-edge technology. The fact is, most ATMs in the field are not modern PCs -- they are much less sophisticated.

"The hope is that we're going to get our engineers together at this meeting -- we're sending our tech guys. This isn't about getting the lobbyists together, as much as it is getting the engineers together. Obviously the blind groups are interested in having this as quickly as possible. We want it as quickly as possible too, but within the practical realities of the world in which we operate."

Curtis Chong is director of technology for the National Federation of the Blind, an organization which has been active in this fight. He is guardedly optimistic about the meeting.

"First of all, I would hope that whoever was there representing the bankers would be in a position to make commitments that they would honor," says Chong. "You need some assurances that the people you are talking to are not there just to explore what you're thinking, but are there to make a commitment they can follow through on. If they can't make that commitment, what value is there in the discussion?

"ATMs should be made accessible, and that should be affordable. I would add one qualification: we learned through our experiences with the Diebold corporation that much of the solution that the industry had adopted, as a sort of first stab at addressing this problem, was one which ultimately would prove difficult to implement and costly to build." (Diebold was one of the defendants in a lawsuit brought by the NFB in May of last year.)

Chong feels that early efforts at establishing "talking ATMs" were not as successful as they could have been, chiefly because the developers weren't fully considering who their audience was.

"When the first talking ATMs were developed, they used human speech," says Chong. "Somebody had to record scripts for each and every screen on the machine. We have now begun to talk with people about the concept of using synthetic speech instead, something which blind people are used to. Now, a sighted person who is not used to listening, will listen to synthetic speech and will say, 'this is terrible.' But we have to remember who we are targeting."

One of the biggest hurdles that the industry will face is that of retrofitting. Making sure that newly manufactured machines have accessibility features is one thing; but modifying the thousands upon thousands of existing ATMs will most likely be a logistical, technical and financial nightmare.

"From an industry perspective, retrofitting is the 800-pound gorilla," says Walker. "And a lot of that gets into legal complexities. The proposal that was put forth by the federal access board was a little too broad sweeping for the industry's taste. The goals are admirable, and we want to achieve that goal, but it's a question of how to achieve that goal in a practical fashion."

"For us a manufacturer, it's logistically simpler to think of using technology to improve our products and make them more accessible," says Burdette. "In fact, that's a key part of some products we'll be announcing later this year. So I'd favor that approach. But having said that, there are a lot of existing machines, probably 50,000 of our machines worldwide -- and if you look at the other manufacturers, that represents a lot of installations. But the cost of making improvements, once a machine is already installed, is greatly magnified. So it becomes an economic issue. The point is, if you take a certain number of dollars that can be justified to make products more accessible, you're going to get more bang for your buck by applying those dollars to new products."

"I think some retrofitting is in order," according to Chong. "How much, would have to be negotiated. Zero is not an acceptable option. Part of the problem is that there's got to be some talking. If you talk, maybe you can arrive at a retrofitting schedule that everybody can agree to."

According to Chong, another worrisome point is the fact that most of the emphasis is being placed on making traditional ATMs accessible. He feels that developers of next-generation ATMs, the much-anticipated machines which will allow everything from Internet access to stock trading, should focus on making those machines accessible from the very beginning.

"Something's got to change," he says. "The architecture they're currently using is not workable in the long run. We cannot limit ourselves to thinking of the traditional ATM, which is what all the fuss has been about. ATMs are clearly going to get smarter. They're building all these new things, but are only giving thought to how to make the traditional ATM accessible. They have to give thought to those things now, not later when somebody sues them."

"One of the big issues is the effect on existing ATMs and how that goes forward," says Feddis. "But also, we're trying to look down the road so that as new products develop, they are developed with blind users in mind. It's easier when you're designing new products to put in voice rather than trying to retrofit. So we're trying to reach an agreement on the immediate problem, but also going ahead."

Nobody on either side of this issue expects quick and easy answers. But the ABA-sponsored meeting looks to be one more step in the direction of fair access for all users.

"When you look at it from a consumer standpoint, we've been waiting around for ten years or so since the ADA was passed," says Chong. "And we're growing tired of waiting. Will something good come out of the meeting? I sure hope it does."

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