News

Another step toward audio ATMs

The Office of Management and Budget on June 25 approved for publication a set of revised guidelines for the Americans with Disabilities Act -- including a requirement for audio-enabled ATMs. Questions still remain -- including when the suggested standards will take effect.

July 6, 2004

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on June 25 approved for publication a set of revised guidelines for the Americans with Disabilities Act -- including a new requirement for audio-enabled ATMs.

Marsha Mazz, senior accessibility specialist for the Access Board, which created the new guidelines, told attendees of last week's NCR-sponsored ATM Channel Planning seminar in Washington D.C. that the board will publish them on July 26, the 14th anniversary of the ADA's enactment.

Mazz said the guidelines are the baseline for standards maintained by other federal agencies that enforce the ADA, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Transportation.

Call to action

The new guidelines "can be used as guidance where they go beyond the current standards," Mazz said. "They enhance and support the existing standards."

Financial institutions and other ATM deployers that adopt the new guidelines "are in no danger of violating the existing law," agreed Nessa Feddis, senior federal counsel for the American Bankers Association. "You don't have to worry that these will change."

"Without a drop-dead effective date, this issue gets put on the back burner," Feddis said. "But continuing to do that would be a mistake."

Not good enough

Indeed, Curtis Chong of the National Federation of the Blind told attendees at a November industry conference that the visually impaired community was frustrated by FIs' relative lack of action on the issue.

"It's the will and the money and the mindset," Chong said. "(The blind) don't figure as a line item on anybody's balance sheet."

Both Chong and Daniel Goldstein, a partner in the Brown, Goldstein & Levy law firm which is assisting the NFB in a legal campaign to ensure that technology is usable by the blind, indicated that the NFB would consider litigation to advance its cause. Some of the nation's largest FIs, including FleetBoston Financial and PNC Bank, introduced audio enabled ATMs when threatened with legal action.

Goldstein said the industry would have spent less to equip ATMs with audio if it had been more proactive. "No thought was given to design issues before the technology was deployed.  It's like installing an elevator. It's going to cost a lot more if it's installed after a building is constructed rather than before."

Goldstein called the new guidelines "a giant distraction." The current regulation, which calls for the blind to be able to make independent use of facilities such as ATMs, is "perfectly adequate," he said.

"If accessibility works, then you're not going to have blind people saying 'this needs to work a different way,'" he said. "A new standard will hurt the financial services industry and ultimately will hurt the blind. A more prescriptive requirement is guaranteed to become obsolete as technology progresses."

Goldstein said FIs and other ATM operators "did not look at it hard enough" when examining alternatives for audio capability at their machines. As early as the mid-1960s, he said, Digital Equipment Corporation (later acquired by Compaq, which in turn was acquired by HP) produced a hardware-driven device that could convert text to speech.

Getting more guidance

Yet some FIs are seeking further clarification on issues -- such as how many ATMs at sites with multiple machines will need to be voice enabled -- before proceeding with broad rollouts of the technology.

Responding to questions from the audience at the NCR seminar, Mazz said one ATM per location would be required to "speak." However, some attendees wondered whether a branch would be considered a single location -- if machines were in drive-up lanes as well as inside the building. "If the machines are serving different populations, then both will need audio," Mazz opined.

Michael Espinosa, ATM coordinator for MB Financial Bank, which has some 70 machines in the Chicago area, said FIs are trying to minimize their upgrade costs. While audio capability was added to MB Financial Bank ATMs during a recent Triple DES upgrade, Espinosa said the bank does not plan to activate the feature until it gets more guidance from the DOJ.

"Like most financial institutions, we have to be cost conscious. We will spend the money when it's necessary," he said.

Mazz predicted that it would be "a minimum of two years" before the DOJ will sign off on standards based on the Access Board guidelines.

Issues of barrier removal will be "the elephant in the room," she said. The DOJ could decide that if existing ATMs meet current standards, they do not need to comply with new standards until a new machine is installed. It would be more likely to make such decisions in areas like height and reach rather than audio capability, Mazz said.

For instance, the existing standard allows for ATMs between 48 inches and 54 inches high. The new guidelines specify a height of no more than 48 inches.

"I can't speak for the DOJ, but I'm guessing that it would probably not make people lower ATMs that complied with the old standard," Mazz said.

"The DOJ can say that ATMs that comply with current regulations won't have to comply with the new ones -- but they can't say that ATMs that don't comply with current regulations won't have to," Goldstein said.