Estonia and then they’ll say “good luck”
Starting in 2011, citizens of Estonia will be able to vote via any cell phone equipped with an ID chip. Will the interface follow WAI guidelines for designing for mobile devices? Will it be friendly for, say, both voice-output and voice-input users? Stay tuned.
“Please listen carefully, as our candidates have changed”
Voting machines have to be accessible to people with different disabilities. Most of the times the manufacturers slap on a voice output system for blind voters and a dual switch scanning solution for physically disabled voters, then call it quits. Results are not always pretty.
Now “Prime III”, an Auburn University prototype, tries a speech recognition system that covers both blind and physically disabled voters. You listen to the choices over a headset. Each candidate is assigned a random number. To vote for that candidate, you say that number, not the name, for privacy reasons.
We’re guessing that this may not be optimal for some voters with hearing, cognitive, or speech disabilities. But at least it’s a new idea. And it also points up the multimodal reality: no single interface will work for all users.
SpeechTechMag.com: Mock Election Showcases Voice-Enabled Voting Machine
Not getting our vote
The Pew Center sponsored a usability review of state websites providing election-related information, and found that on a scale of 1 to 100, the average overall usability score was a discouraging 58. Ten percent of the score was based on minimal accessibility implementation (use of ALT attributes, color contrast, Skip-Nav links, scalable fonts, and color indication of visited links), and the average there was only 49. Oof.
Pew Center: Being Online is Not Enough: State Elections Web Sites (PDF)
Schlock the vote
We’ve heard there’s a presidential election coming up; in preparation, thousands of voting machines are now available in–warehouses. Problems with machine reliability and security are covered in this article, but not even a whisper about the implications for accessibility.
Text your vote
A significant majority (61%) of polled Americans said they’d prefer to vote in the next election via text messaging, and the percentage is even higher among those who’ll become eligible to vote by 2016. Reliability issues aside, this could be a boon for people with disabilities–or a nightmare, depending on implementation. How will write-ins be handled? Will the system be able to recognize creative spelling (Barak, Barac, Braq…)? Will verification and confidentiality issues be addressed? We refer anyone interested in the implementation of this strategy to the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines for a comprehensive view of accessibility considerations.
Cellular News: U.S. Cell Phone Users Open to Texting Their Vote for President
Mulch the vote
As Florida’s election officials move to paper-based optical scanning, what to do about the 29,000 touchscreen machines they have? Well, they’re going to be marketed to other jurisdictions (!) or “de-manufactured”, AKA “taken apart and sold for components and scrap.”
E-Vote: Florida Touch Screen Voting Machines to be Recycled - Government Technology
Voter rooters
California’s presidential primary is only seven months away, and a concerted effort is underway to make sure the system is airtight. Among the testers is Noel Runyon, a blind voter who sued Santa Clara over accessibility after he encountered problems during the last presidential election; he’s part of “a separate [but equal?] task force that is testing the reliability of voting systems used by the disabled.” We’re hoping low tech like the Vote-PAD is also being considered…
San Francisco Chronicle: Experts put voting machines to test