The Associated Press State & Local Wire

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Intrust unveils talking ATM

WICHITA, Kan. Intrust Bank's newest automated teller machine talks.

The machine, the first of its kind in Kansas, was put in at Envision in
Wichita. The agency provides jobs, job training and rehabilitation
services for people who are blind or who have low vision.

"This is a unique way that we can serve the vision-impaired and serve
them very, very well," said Ron Baldwin, president and chief operating
officer at Intrust.

People who are blind or visually impaired use the machine by plugging an
earpiece or headset into a jack on the machine. Intrust will provide an
earpiece for people upon request, but an earpiece isn't required for the
ATM to work.

With the earpiece plugged in, people follow the audio instructions to
swipe their card, choose their transaction and enter the amount they are
withdrawing.

The prompt tells customers what keys they have pressed. For example,
someone withdrawing $10 is told: "You have entered 10 dollars and zero
cents."

Linda Merrill, president and chief executive of Envision, said this type
of machine gives people who are blind more independence by giving them
"the same things that we want - we want privacy and confidentiality, and
we want convenience. And accessibility helps provide those same things to
people with disabilities."

ATMs that have Braille keypads are useless to blind people because the
braille only tells you what the buttons say, not what is on the screen,
she said.

Baldwin said other such machines may be added.

"We're thrilled to be here, we're thrilled to be part of something new
and exciting and part of helping make maybe one person's day a little bit
easier," he said.


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