Maybe I’m thinking too simply, but I put fort a suggestion three years ago that seemed obvious to me… see my old weblog at http://mumble.editthispage.com/2000/11/22

Maybe I misused the term “touch-screen voting” when I should have said “electronic voting machine.” Touch-screen or no touch-screen is irrelevant for this particular discussion (though very relevant to some usability folks). Your argument about tactile buttons is a very good one. That said, we *must* find a way for those blind or deaf voters (and yes, eventually the blind and deaf, too) to vote.

Note that most blind people don’t read Braille (yes, something else I learned at the conference).

As for allowing the voter access to the paper printout, there’s a bunch of other issues there: if the user can access the printer, then he can probably screw it up in some way and cause a denial of service attack.

In the end, my main point is that “let’s just do it the way Canada does it” or “let’s just add paper receipts” is probably not enough. The problem is more complicated.

Touch screen voting as an enablement technology for blind people is a specious argument.

A case in point:

A friend of mine worked for several years in a video store. One of her customers was blind (he listend to movies). During her tenure there, this customer bought two VCRs – the second after the first one died. The first had clearly delineated buttons, the second had “soft-touch” buttons. Unfortunately for this customer, “real” buttons had gone out of style, so there were no other options at the time.

After the purchase of the second VCR, this customer called the store every few months to find out if there were any new VCRs with ‘real’ buttons, because he couldn’t use the new VCR by himself – it was too difficult to determine which was the right button by feel.

A touch screen has even fewer tactile cues. And even if there were some way to cue a blind voter using sound, how would you cue a blind and deaf voter? The right technology would include a braille and ink printout, so both visually-impared and visually-sound voters could verify their votes and demand fix prior to submission of their form if there was an error.

For paper jams – make the machine open where the voter stands, so the voter can pull their paper out before the technician goes to work. Cash register tape is relatively simple, well understood and robust technology, and it’s dead easy to tear off the right part and straighten out if it jams.