648 17 Assistive Technology for Daily Living

of America has installed a number of talking ATMs. A number of other US banks have plans to install talking ATMs or have done so. By June 2005, most of the larger banks in the UK had begun to install talking ATMs. Most recent machines are using a standardised approach based on standard PC hardware and a standard audio jack. In the USA and Canada this standardised approach is the result of regulation. The first public touch screen interface without a keypad to offer access to blind people was a talking ATM installed by Citibank in July 1999. Despite the benefits of talking ATMs, there are also concerns by some visually impaired people that the use of an audio device would indicate that the user was visually impaired and therefore an easy target for theft (Quarrie and Howarth undated).

17.7Communications and Access to Information: Other Technologies

This section will consider the accessibility issues associated with communication and information technologies, other than telecommunications, computers and the Internet and print media and how these issues can be resolved. In particular information kiosks and smart cards are discussed and EZ Access® is presented as one potential solution to information kiosk accessibility.

17.7.1 Information Kiosks and Other Self-service Systems

Self-service systems are increasingly being used to provide a wide range of services. These include information kiosks, ATMs and machines for purchasing tickets. These systems can provide a quick easy to use service or lead to intense frustration, depending on the design. There are also issues of user preferences and the accessibility or inaccessibility of facilities to particular groups of (disabled) users.

Information kiosks based on personal computer technology can be used to give people access to a wide range of information, as long as the design is accessible and easy to use. The kiosk and all its facilities should be physically accessible, which can be difficult when trying to meet the different needs of people who are very short, those who are very tall and wheelchair users. The controls and input and output slots should be placed separately from each other, be easy to grasp, very hard to confuse and not capable of activation by mistake. The user needs to be able to plug in individual devices such as earphones, a Braille display or a wheelchair-based control device, such as an infrared link. Swipe readers should not be used in public terminals, as coordinating the swipe speed and direction and card orientation can cause difficulties for some users. Card readers may be difficult to use due to the need to identify the correct card and its correct orientation and find the slot to insert it into the reader.

A user friendly system should give the user reasonable control and the following facilities:

•A consistent method of navigation between screens and between the different levels of information and services.

•A logical and easy to follow arrangement of menus and/or options.

•The ability to easily customise the system.

•The ability to access the system using sight, hearing or touch or a combination and preferably to choose between them.

•Feedback in tactile, audio (preferably not by beeps) and visual form, as well as the ability to shut off some or all of the feedback modes.

•Being asked to confirm actions as a default, as well as the option not to be asked to confirm actions.

•Choice of the speed of operations. Many users will be discouraged from using public terminals if they feel rushed, whereas others may feel stressed if the process if too slow.

Publicly available keypads require the following properties for some degree of accessibility (Gill 1997, 2006):

•Physical buttons that can be pressed.

•Auditory and tactual confirmation of a button press (with the option to turn off the auditory confirmation if the transaction is likely to last any time).

•Telephone style layout, with the digits 1, 2, 3 on the top row of the number pad.

•A dot on the number 5 key.

•Tactual differentiation and clear separation of the number keys and the function keys.The command keys should be to the right of the numeric keys, as keys in this position are less likely to be inadvertently pressed.

•Characters should be of a reasonable size and have good contrast with the colour of the key e.g. black characters on a matt white background.

Screens should have the following properties to increase accessibility (Gill 1997, 2006):

•A large screen with clear graphics.

•Protection from glare.

•Viewable from a wheelchair.

•A legible typeface with text on a plain background and the possibility of increasing the text size.

•Avoidance of scrolling or flashing text.

•The use of standard icons, as far as possible.

•No barriers to users getting close to the screen.

•Good colour contrast with the background and avoidance of colour usage which could cause problems to colour blind people.

•An adjustable display angle.

•The option of selecting the language. Preferably all the languages spoken by significant numbers of people in the area as well as the main languages likely to

650 17 Assistive Technology for Daily Living

be spoken by tourists should be included. There are then issues of how a possibly large number of choices should be presented.

Examples of accessible information systems

TouchVision in California has developed a talking touch-screen kiosk using text- to-speech technology to read the screen content. The content and available choices are the same whether or not users use the speech-enhanced option.

A way-finding talking kiosk in New York runs on an internal computer and combines a tactile/talking map with a standard telephone style keypad. This gives travellers a choice of options for accessing way-finding information which is delivered as both speech and output on a high contrast large print video display. The kiosk alerts potential users through bird song which can be heard from 150 ft (45.7 m) away. The user is then greeted when they come within 10 ft (3.0 m) of the system and welcomed and introduced to the system from 2 ft (0.6 m) onwards. Users who are familiar with the system can hit the star key on the keypad to go to the main menu. The system is being used by both sighted and visually impaired people.

Some terminals in Woolworths Supermarkets in Australia have been made accessible by putting a Brailled overlay over the keypad and a tactual representation on the under-side of the machine to tactually inform user of the correct card orientation.

The information kiosk developed to provide information on the museums in Tampere, Finland is placed on a stand with a web camera on top of the kiosk. A touch screen is used to navigate the kiosk. The main area of the user interface is used to provide the information requested. There is an interactive agent in the right upper corner of the interface and a video image taken by the web camera below it. The agent is a talking head which shows facial expressions and can turn and look in different direction. Different buttons can be used to give commands to the kiosk. The position of the components can easily be changed by editing the configuration file. Information is provided in Finnish, but the language could easily be changed. The talking head has computer vision, allowing it to detect potential users and invite them in and greet and say farewell to users as they enter and leave. Some users will like this human type touch, whereas others may find it annoying. The system still requires further development, as the talking head sometimes loses visual contact with users and then greets them again when detecting them. The repeated greetings can become very irritating (Mäkinen et al., 2002).

17.7.2 Using Smart Cards

A smart card is a credit card sized plastic card that incorporates an integrated electronic circuit. There are four main types:

•Memory only: they are often used as prepayment cards for public telephones.

•Microprocessor: they can include security features, for instance for financial applications.

•Contactless: the card does not need to be put into a reader and can work from a distance of up to 10 cm. This is useful for transport applications. Contactless cards also have a reduced risk of the card being stolen during use.

•Combined contact/contactless: they are more expensive to make, but are useful in some multi-application systems.

Smart cards should have embossed symbols to enable blind people to select the correct card and there should be a 2-mm notch on the trailing edge to make it easier to insert the card correctly. Biometric systems use physiological or behavioural characteristics to identify the user rather than requiring them to enter a number. This will make the system easier to use for some people, but may raise security and privacy issues, particularly when the biometric information is stored centrally rather than on the smart card. There should always be the choice of an alternative verification system, such as PIN, with the decision of which system to use left to the user.

Facial recognition is probably the simplest and least intrusive system. Although not the most accurate, it gives reasonable results when used in combination with a secure token such as a smart card. Fingerprint systems are fairly accurate, but unsuitable for users with prosthetic hands or injured fingers. They may also be unacceptable to many users due to their association with the detection of crime. Iris recognition is accurate, but more intrusive. It requires users to position their eye relative to a camera which can be difficult for tall or short people or wheelchair users, as well as blind people. It may also be unacceptable to some ethnic and religious groups.

Smart cards could contain information about the user’s preferred method of using a machine or terminal. For instance a visually impaired person could have a card that is encoded to instruct the terminal to display large characters on the screen, to provide audio output (preferably with a headphone to ensure privacy) and to give the user additional time or simplify the choices. The draft European standard EN1332-4 (CEN 2006a) contains a method of encoding this information. Smart cards are relatively widely used and therefore do not have the disadvantage of marking users out as obviously ‘disabled’. However, the use of any device, such as smart cards, which encodes information about the user raises important privacy and security issues, particularly as the user cannot necessarily access this information or determine if they have accessed all the information about themselves.

A Special Needs Application Program Interface (SNAPI) can be used to put a user’s preferences on a smart card and the cards can be used in cash dispensers, ticket machines and public access computers. The machine automatically returns to the default settings when the card is removed. The Snapi software standardises the coding of individual preferences to enable them to be stored on a smart card. The information stored is based on the person’s preferences and is chosen by them. However, a number of machines will not have the facilities to comply. For instance most ATMs do not currently have speech capability. The person’s identity should not be visible to the system, only their preferences for using it. The Department of Transport has incorporated the new standard into its specifications for ticket