Usability Testing is Key if Ballot Marking Devices Are to be Accessible

From the Center for Civic Design‘s Whitney Quesenbery:

Because they produce a paper record, ballot marking systems avoid the security issues of fully electronic voting systems (known as DREs) in which voters both mark and cast the ballot electronically. However, the paper ballot must be designed so that it can be easily read with a magnifying device or using personal assistive technology that can read the printed text through optical character recognition (OCR) so that blind and low vision voters can also verify the paper ballot.

The benefits of a ballot marking device are not automatic. They must be well-designed for a usable and accessible voting experience—in both visual and audio formats.

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