News

E-Trade will make 2,000 of its 15,000 ATMs ''talking' units

June 10, 2003

BOSTON, Mass. -- As part of a June 10 settlement with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the Massachusetts state attorney general's office, E-Trade Group Inc. has agreed to retrofit 2,000 ATMs nationwide, including 17 Massachusetts units, with voice commands that will simplify their use by blind people.

According to the Boston Globe, however, E-Trade remains in a dispute with Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly and NFB over who is responsible for turning other E-Trade ATMs into 'talking ATMs.'

E-Trade is the nation's second-largest ATM provider, with 15,000 cash machines in stores, gas stations and restaurants. It owns only 2,000 of them, however, and said it merely maintains the other 13,000 owned by merchants.

It said it will replace or retrofit those units at the owners' request, but for a price.

'We can't just go in and retrofit machines that we don't own,' an E-Trade spokeswoman said.

E-Trade ATMs include instructions in Braille and Braille numerals on keypads. But James Gashel, director of governmental affairs for the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind, called that a 'laughable and meaningless approach,' because most ATMs are impossible to navigate without knowing what the ATM is telling you to do. "It doesn't do any good to know that the 'one' is where the 'one' is if you can't get information from the screen," he said.