Hobart City Council is on the verge of signing up to use the Commonwealth Bank’s inaccessible EFTPOS tablet, Albert as the key payment device for their 2015/16 Taste of Tasmania food festival.
The Digital Gap Initiative wrote about this device on 18 September, after its Founder and President met with CommBank to express their concerns.
Digital Gap Initiative Tasmanian member, James Newton, met with Hobart City Council representatives last Friday, 25 September.
We’re excited to announce that Digital Gap will be taking its message of inclusive design and a call for national compliance standards on Accessibility to Canberra on November 12 2015 at Parliament House at 10am. The event has been scheduled to coincide with the 10th anniversary of World Usability Day which seeks to use innovation to ensure that technology enhances the lives of people rather than placing additional barriers to everyday life.
Finish Reading: Digital Gap Initiative heading to Parliament
by Gisele Mesnage and Ted McCoskey
Our first editorial is not published with the intent of naming and shaming the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) or any other business. Our message is that the story of Albert highlights the need for national, compliance-based standards on digital accessibility.
Albert is a new touch-screen tablet EFTPOS payment device developed and promoted by CBA in partnership with global hardware and software specialist Wincor Nixdorf and design firm IDEO.
Albert has been available to Australian merchants since March 2015 and the bank is marketing it to retailers, cinemas, restaurants and other businesses and government services that use EFTPOS terminals.
When CBA initially announced the coming of Albert in a media release on 17 July 2012, it proclaimed, “Albert, created using the Android Ver 4.0 operating system, is a first-of-its kind solution in the market. Moving beyond the parameters of traditional, simple payment devices, the human-centric design of Albert has been specifically created to improve customer interaction.”
But that “human-centric design approach”, which the media release, states was “engineered from the ground-up”, does not appear to encompass use by customers of diverse abilities and needs. Accessibility does not appear to have been integrated into the design from the ground-up.
Finish Reading: Commbank’s new EFTPOS “Albert”: Accessibility short-changed
