Voting machine for people with disabilities

Abstract

At present, the only methods of casting a vote in a Maltese election is by paper ballot, braille ballot or an audio guide. If a person is unable to vote on their own using one of these mechanisms, they are provided assistance by an electoral representative in the vote casting process. This procedure blocks the citizens from their right to a secret vote by forcing the citizens to reveal their vote to the representative. Furthermore, people suffering from severe visual impairment have no means of verifying that their intended vote is being cast. This study’s aim is to create an interface for a voting machine located at the polling station which will allow citizens with disabilities to vote unassisted. A participatory design process, which includes the target audience and experts in accessibility, is used to ensure the accessibility of the artefacts. The approach taken is iterative where the designs are refined into more usable and accessible prototypes. The prototypes will also increase in fidelity; hence, the final prototype will look closest to a fully functional interface. The changes are based on feedback provided by the accessibility experts or the results of the user testing. During the user testing, the prototypes are measured in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction. Some issues were encountered when carrying out the user tests, therefore, the number of testers and the conditions under which the tests were held are not ideal. Using the high-fidelity prototype, the testers were able to cast the intended vote in under five minutes. All testers were also able to make the instructed changes to the vote. All prototypes obtained a good user satisfaction score, the highest mean score being 95.4 for the final prototype. The high-fidelity prototype showed an improvement in effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. However, the improvement is not statistically significant. This is possibly due to the small number of participants.