We Indians need to be on guard before such inaccessible touch pad
tablet reaches at all shops in malls/retail outlets. In the garb of
digital India, we will also be confronting this menace. Lets pull up
our socks and get in touch with the relevant authorities to get
accessibility of EFTPOs before its too late. I hope our accessibility
experts in India will take serious note of this report which has
robbed blind people in Australia of their privacy. Days are not far
when we will have ATM machines with out keypad and touch will do the
tricks. Then question arises what type of accessible ATMs will be
installed?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/28/commonwealth-banks-new-eftpos-system-makes-blind-people-reveal-pin
Disability advocates say the touchscreen terminal is difficult to be
accessed by the blind or visually-impaire
Disability advocates have criticised Commonwealth Bank for deploying
an Eftpos machine that cannot be used by the blind or
visually-impaired.
The advocacy group Blind Citizens Australia and the former disability
discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes said the touchscreen-only
terminal was preventing blind users using the machine, or forcing them
to divulge their pin to retail staff.
The bank’s Albert terminal is a tablet with no physical buttons or
tactile keys, which means about 350,000 blind or low-vision
Australians cannot use it independently. As of April, 75,000 terminals
were in use across Australia.
The executive officer of Blind Citizens Australia, Emma Bennison,
called on the bank to stop the rollout until the terminal could be
made accessible to all.
“Our members are finding that each week many more shops and
restaurants in their local communities are no longer accessible to
them,” she said.
“People who are blind are being asked to divulge their pin number to a
retail staff member to make a payment. This is totally unacceptable
... I cannot complete transactions which other Australians make 10 or
20 times a day.
Innes said he and other advocates had contacted the bank about the
terminal 18 months ago.
“We asked them to stop the rollout and modify the machine by adding a
keypad,” he said. “They have talked to us a lot about the problem, but
taken very little action to do anything about it.
“Many people who are blind or vision-impaired have stopped going to
retailers who only have these machines. Others have stopped making
transactions, and been forced to rely on family members and friends to
do the grocery shopping, pay for the drinks or buy the milk and bread.
“The Commonwealth Bank, by rolling out this device, is eroding the
independence for which we have fought for many years.”
The Albert machine is a seven-inch Android touchscreen tablet,
launched in March 2015 and described as “an innovative new EFTPOS
tablet [to] disrupt the payments space”.
According to the tablet’s user guide, Albert has accessibility
features that include text-to-speech and a “virtual cursor” that uses
swipes to input pin details.
“Albert has the capacity to be accessible to Australians who are blind
or have low vision through the use of text-to-speech technology,” it
says.
“Text to speech will prompt the customer to select Cheque, Savings or
Credit ... The voice prompts will instruct the customer to enter their
pin.”
Users can then use a “virtual cursor” that starts on the number five
to select numbers.
“Swiping up, down, left, right or diagonally moves the virtual cursor.
A two finger tap, or a double tap confirms the input. For example,
from 5, swipe left + confirm = 4.”
However, customers will get only three chances to enter their pin
correctly before their account is locked.
“There is an accessibility mode to turn on to make it apparently
accessible, except you still have to listen to a 10-minute tutorial so
it really isn’t possible to make it accessible, particularly in a
noisy environment,” she said.
“It’s just completely unacceptable ... regularly people have told us
that they had no other choice but to divulge their pin because they
can’t hear the tutorial, the staff member doesn’t know how to turn the
accessibility on, or they don’t have time to stand around for 10
minutes.”
A Commonwealth Bank spokeswoman said the bank was working with the
blind and visually-impaired community to “enhance our solutions”.
“When leveraging new technologies, such as touchscreens, ensuring
access for the vison-impaired community is vital and presents
industry-wide challenges,” she said.
--
Avinash Shahi
Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU
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