Industry Surveys

To learn more about how innovations in wireless technology could best serve consumers with disabilities, Dis-IT researchers from the Neil Squire Society and British Columbia Institute of Technology conducted interviews with companies that manufacture bank machines, point-of-sale terminals and similar products.

The interviewees generally indicated that accessible products for people with disabilities were not high on their priority lists. When asked what factors have the greatest influence on their companies’ decisions to develop new products or new features in existing products, the industry respondents said the two most important factors were:

• consumer requirements and feedback
• industry standards

• market trends
• new developments in technology
• price reduction

The companies were considering accessibility in their plans to use wireless technology in products/services such as retail payment terminals and personal communication applications. However, when asked if they were planning to modify any existing products to make them more accessible, only one specifically indicated that a change would be made to be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Generally, they indicated that their products are designed to comply with the standards and legislation that are currently in effect. Overall, the companies said they would be developing products with all users in mind, not just users with disabilities. Further, they indicated that the minimum requirements in existing standards (e.g., ADA) would continue to define a product’s level of accessibility.

Factors that would motivate industry to make their products/services more accessible were:

• customer or market demand
• new legislative or standards requirements
• potential market size (i.e., accessible products/services that have a broader market than just people with disabilities)

When asked to identify the three biggest barriers to making products more accessible, standards and costs were the most common responses:

• Standards:
  • standards biased towards people with disabilities can compromise the wider user community
  • standards created for a particular type of technology (e.g., banking machines), are sometimes inappropriately applied to other types of related but different technology (e.g., point-of-sale terminals).
  • standards designed to provide consistency among similar products (i.e., minimum requirements) make it difficult for manufacturers to differentiate their products from their competitors’ products.
• Costs:
  • products that incorporate accessibility features often end up costing two or three times as much as a “non-accessible” product
  • investments by vendors in developing accessible technology may require a long financial write-off period, resulting in slow and inconsistent change to more accessible technology

Finally, when asked what could be done by outside agencies to help tackle the accessibility challenge, suggestions included:

• increasing collaboration amongst stakeholders (i.e., financial institutions, technology vendors, standards bodies, and disability groups)
• developing standards that are relevant, mandated, enforced, and cross-border/international in scope
• advocacy groups should develop a better understanding of what is technologically possible and then suggest solutions based on this understanding