(Omaha World-Herald)
August 19, 2011
OMAHA, NEBRASKA– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] Banks, credit unions and independent ATM operators are hustling to meet a March 2012 deadline to make their machines — more than 400,000 nationally, 3,400 in Nebraska and about 2,000 in Iowa — accessible to people who are blind or have low vision.
New rules, six years in the making under the Americans with Disabilities Act, mean millions of dollars spent on new or upgraded machines. They also mean the ubiquitous automated teller machines that spit out cash will be accessible to thousands more people who have problems seeing the buttons and screens.
"It allows the blind to visually impaired person to be able to enter all their card numbers and information without having the assistance of somebody else," said Robert Spangler of Vinton, Iowa, president of the Iowa Council of the United Blind. "It's a privacy issue. How would you like to drive up to an ATM and give somebody the information to do it for you? What's good for one is good for all of us."
Those with partial sight may be able to see parts of an ATM, he said, "but your field of vision may be reduced or it takes you a lot longer to read the stuff that's on the screen."
Arguments over the need for the federal accessibility standards are long over, although until February of this year some banks thought the new rules might not apply to their existing machines.
Entire article:
New ATM rules aim to aid visually impaired
http://www.omaha.com/article/20110815/LIVEWELL03/708159899/1161
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