This white paper reviews personal assistive technology that voters might use in the polling place — both what’s available now and what’s likely to become common within the next 5-10 years. 

The broad goal of using technology is to ensure that voters can use the communication and interaction methods that are most familiar to them while voting. 

Current standards need updating 

The requirements in the first version of the VVSG were drafted before the widespread availability of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The extraordinary expansion in technology generally, coupled with the specific availability of mobile devices, has changed the landscape in several ways:

• New technologies are available that might be incorporated into voting systems
• Voters themselves might routinely use new devices with the expectation that they will be able to use them to interact with some parts of a voting system
• Many of these “assistive” technologies are available to any voter on mainstream consumer devices
• Personal assistive technologies can fill gaps in the accessibility features, making voting systems more universal

Emerging technology can inform future standards 

Looking at emerging technology can help us predict which technologies might become so common that they are an expected part of everyday life, much as the idea that anyone can have a camera, phone, and GPS in their pocket. Like other standards, requirements for voting systems need to be robust to assure they remain useful over many years. only include the most important points here, and close by directing readers to the full report above.

This white paper was prepared by Whitney Quesenbery, Center for Civic Design, and Jennifer Sutton, JSutton Media, for the EAC-NIST Human Factors Public Working Group. This work was performed in collaboration with NIST under financial assistance award 70NANB14H240 from the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology.