Voice-Guided Cash Machines for the Blind

November 23, 2000
WHAT'S NEXT
By ANNE EISENBERG

GETTING cash from an automated teller machine is a convenience that
most people now take for granted. But not the blind.

  Braille figures on keypads are useful for blind people when they
are punching in a personal identification number. But Braille isn't
much help after that, because the rest of the transactions are
usually visual, driven by on-screen choices like Checking or
Savings?

  Now Diebold Inc., of Canton, Ohio, a major manufacturer of
automated teller machines, has developed a prototype for an
inexpensive machine guided entirely by audio prompts. The company
was spurred in part by a lawsuit filed against Diebold and the
Rite-Aid Corporation under the Americans With Disabilities Act
charging that the machines that Diebold was installing in Rite-Aid
stores used screen text prompts that were inaccessible to the
blind.

  The new automated teller machines, which will be manufactured by
Diebold, are designed not for the posh world of $10,000-to- $30,000
high-end machines typically set into the walls of banks, but for
the world of $5,000-to-$8,000 plug-them-in A.T.M.'s springing up in
retail spaces like drugstores and grocery stores throughout the
country. Inexpensive enough to be bought by small businesses, the
new machines will make bank transactions more accessible and
convenient for the blind.

  Within a year or so customers may plug headphones into an A.T.M.
at the corner grocery store and be guided by synthesized speech
asking politely, "How much cash do you want?"

  Diebold will demonstrate a prototype of the new machine at a major
trade show, the Bank Administration Institute conference on retail
financial services next week in New Orleans.

  Using voice to guide an A.T.M. is not a new idea. There are
already a handful of high-end voice-guided cash machines scattered
across the United States, many of them manufacturered by Diebold.
But those machines, primarily found in banks, usually use sound
cards with canned messages, typically recorded by actors, that are
stored on the machine in the form of audio files. Any time the
procedure changes, the script must be changed and rerecorded by the
actors   an expensive procedure.

  The new machines are not likely to produce the polished tones of
an actor, but they will cost a lot less and be much more flexible.
That is because the voices that will speak from the new machines
will be generated not by professionals but by computer software
that converts text into synthesized speech.

  The synthesized speech is understandable, though unmistakably
produced by a machine, not a person. When users plug their
headphones into the jack in the modified A.T.M., the
computer-driven text-to- speech technology will translate the given
string of characters and read them aloud by way of the sound card.

  Text-to-speech technology is already widely used, in voice
recognition programs, for instance, that read back text like memos
or letters that people have dictated to their computers. It is also
being used in programs that read e-mail over the phone and in
conversational interfaces being developed for Web sites.

  "This is the first time a text-to-speech solution has been
implemented on an A.T.M. at this price point," said Alan Looney,
director of product planning and management at Diebold.

  The new machine will have a customized processor and software. The
software within the machine will manage what is said and when.
Specialized circuitry and electronics will handle the
text-to-speech conversion and drive the headphone jack, Mr. Looney
said.

  Diebold was moved to develop the new machines in part because of a
lawsuit brought in May by the National Federation of the Blind and
others in the United States District Court for the District of
Columbia.

  Daniel F. Goldstein, a lawyer for the federation, said that
Diebold responded to the lawsuit in a way he found unique. "Instead
of fighting or settling, as most groups do," Mr. Goldstein said,
"Diebold went far beyond what we sought. They wanted to talk about
an effective, inexpensive way to build better machines, not just to
settle."

  Diebold entered into a cooperation agreement to develop new
technology and to market it so that A.T.M.'s with voice technology
might become the default option in the country for retail machines,
Mr. Goldstein said.

  "Within nine months," he said recently, "we're to complete a
design for an improved retail machine that has all the features the
National Federation of the Blind wants."

  Curtis Chong, director of technology at the federation, is among
the people who will be examining Diebold's prototype to see if it
is up to snuff. Mr. Chong is totally blind.

  "We, the blind, are used to synthesized speech, so that is not
going to be a problem," he said.

  The National Federation of the Blind has a membership of 50,000.
Mr. Chong estimated the number of blind people in the United States
at 1.1 million. "Any blind person who is currently using a computer
knows how easy it is to understand text-to-speech," he said.

  Mr. Chong, like others involved in developing the new machines, is
in favor of inexpensive headsets carried by each user, rather than
machine-mounted telephone handsets, which are expensive and easily
vandalized.

  The new generation of machines in retail outlets, he said, will
have to perform certain actions. First the machine should be able
to give a physical tour, telling the user where its controls are
and how to use them.

  The tour, as well as any other procedures run on the machine, must
be interruptible, he said, so that at any point the user can stop
the spiel and get on with a particular transaction.

  For the machines to be satisfactory, he said, every important step
they take should be verbalized, from verification of the personal
identification number to balance inquiries to receipts. The receipt
is very important to Mr. Chong. "It provides that final bit of
verification for users before they walk away," he said.

  Mr. Chong currently uses two cash machines, neither of them
voice-guided   one in his neighborhood grocery store and one at his
bank   and through them he has learned how important verification
can be.

  "It's possible for a blind person with a good memory to use a
familiar machine," he said, as long as the person has memorized the
sequence of buttons to push and there are no changes in the screens
that cause the transaction to go awry.

  "I stick in my card, wait about three seconds, enter my pin and
then quick punch the A key three times," he said, describing the
process first to enter the pin, then to indicate he wants to
withdraw money from his checking account. "Then I punch in an
amount I know is divisible by $20, and then `yes' to accept the
transaction."

  If all goes well, he gets his money. But if the bank has made
changes to the screen and Mr. Chong doesn't know that, he ends up
having to flag down someone to help him. "But I will never tell a
sighted person my PIN number," he said. "The one thing the Braille
helps me with is to punch in my PIN."

  Mr. Chong is looking forward to the time when he will be able to
use a machine at a bank, a convenience store or even a drive-up
window without relying on his memory or the kindness of strangers.

  "We are going to work toward text-to- speech in the next
generation of A.T.M.'s so that we have voice guidance in all stages
of the transaction," he said. "So on a bad day, when I stick in my
credit card by mistake, the machine will let me know."


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