The solution, after considerable hard work on the part of many individuals, has been to make the machines talk.
It has taken time and a remarkable organized advocacy effort to develop a more satisfactory solution. Even though the ADA dictated that banks render ATMs independently usable by blind and visually impaired customers, there was no definition of what form that independent access would take. The problem, in part, stemmed from interpretation of the law. Even for those customers who memorized the sequence of a particular machine, withdrawing cash was the only function possible.
Screen prompts appearing on the visual display guide sighted customers through any transaction, and this information remained completely unavailable to blind customers. Unfortunately, simply marking keys with static information still precluded the interactive operation ATMs were designed to facilitate. Certainly, the ability to orient oneself independently to the layout of keys on an ATM was a step beyond complete inaccessibility. Since January 1992, Access Guidelines required that at least one machine at each location offer "instructions and all information for use" to be made "accessible to and independently usable by persons with vision impairments."Īlthough the addition of braille, therefore, was a good faith approach on the part of the banking industry to comply with the law in making machines accessible to blind customers, the results were less than favorable. Some even had panels of explanation outlining the sequence of steps for making a cash withdrawal. Some had braille numbers on the keys and braille identifying such key points as where to insert the card, withdraw the cash, or remove the receipt. Conversations began at that time about the feasibility of machines that would verbalize text and were abandoned for a variety of reasons, including, as Moyer puts it, "patronizing concerns such as blind customers being vulnerable to others observing their transactions."įollowing the passage of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, thousands of ATMs around the country appeared with varying amounts of braille on them. History of Accessible ATMsĪs early as 1982, Diebold Inc., an ATM manufacturer, was consulting with Jeff Moyer, then rehabilitation director for the Cleveland Society for the Blind, on braille key set designs for automated teller machines. We have asked strangers to enter our private PINs (personal identification numbers), have inadvertently entered $200 when we wanted only $20, and have been outsiders looking in at the convenience of transferring funds from savings to checking, depositing money in our own accounts, or reading the account balance appearing on that printed receipt withdrawn from the silent machine. More than once, our responses were too slow, and that machine made that unmistakable error sound, repetitious beeping, as it spit my card back out of the slot bearing the braille label "Insert card." Eventually, the transaction was completed, but along with the cash in my hand, I walked away with no small amount of aggravation.īlind people around the country have many such stories to tell. But the ATM was higher than a six-year-old's eye level, and I had to lift her up after each step of the simple transaction was executed. "You'll have to read the screen to me," I told her, on our walk to the ATM whose location I had learned from a few inquiries to people in the area. My daughter was six years old and a gifted reader. It was a Sunday afternoon in 1995 when I desperately needed cash for an upcoming event and was nowhere near the single automated teller machine (ATM) whose keypad and sequences I had memorized.