Development of a More Universal Voting Interface

Abstract

Voting systems must be usable by all eligible voters regardless of their skills, abilities, and experiences. However, current voting systems do not provide accessibility to all voters, including those with physical and cognitive limitations. To make voting easier for people with and without disabilities, we developed a universal voting interface that integrates a simplified and flexible ballot design that includes multimodal I/O interfaces. The formative usability study results demonstrate people with various types of disabilities could perform the voting tasks on EZ Ballot using their preferred input. In order to refine the EZ Ballot interface, the study found the specific issues on design such as instruction, selection of candidates, confusion about going back, incorrect gestural interaction, and write-in interface.

The Bridge Connecting Theory to Practice - A Case Study of Universal Design Process

“…EZ Ballot is a universally designed voting system with multimodal input and output that facilitates participation of voting by allowing voters to go through the voting process by simply answering "yes" and "no" questions [16] (Fig. 3).…”