[1605] in Humor
HUMOR: Uncle Cecil
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Wed Sep 18 10:24:43 1996
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 10:00:22 EDT
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 00:32:44 -0800
From: connie@interserve.com (Connie Kleinjans)
Uncle Cecil's books and columns are called "The Straight Dope." They
are screamingly funny and kind of addicting in an annoying sort of
way. You should go buy the books immediately. Now!
- ---------
It turns out there is a Cecil Adams site on America Online. And
just when I was about to cancel my subscription! I spent some time
wading through back columns, and ran across this one:
Dear Cecil:
A question gnaws at me. We've all used those drive-up teller
machines at banks. Why are the buttons identified with braille?
- --Vox Populi, Baltimore
Dear Vox:
Because federal regulations require it, wiseguy.
To be specific, section 4.34.4 of the ADA Accessibility Guidelines
for Buildings and Facilities (Appendix to Part 1191, 36 CFR Chapter
XI, issued pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990)
says, "Instructions and all information for use [of an automated
teller machine] shall be made accessible to and independently usable
by persons with vision impairments."
Drive-up ATMs, unlike the walk-up variety, don't need to be
wheelchair accessible, but the rules make no exception regarding
accessibility by the blind.
You're now thinking: boy, those federal bureaucrats sure are stupid.
Don't they realize a blind person isn't going to be able to drive
to a drive-up ATM?
Cecil reserves judgment on the stupidity question. But even if the
feds weren't smart enough to notice this little problem on their
own, there were plenty of people who pointed it out for them before
the rule was finalized.
The American Bankers Association, for one, asked that drive-up
machines be exempt from the visually-impaired requirement,
arguing that a blind person using a drive-up ATM would have to
be a passenger and that the driver of the vehicle could help with
the transaction.
No dice, said the Architectural and Transportation Barriers
Compliance Board, reasoning that driver assistance "would not
allow the [blind] individual to use the ATM independently."
This may sound like one of those absurd points of principle, but
ATM manufacturers say a fair number of blind people do take cabs
to drive-up ATMs, and nobody wants to ask a total stranger to help
with a financial transaction.
Your question does point to a more serious problem, which other
readers have also raised: how the hell is a blind person supposed
to use any kind of ATM? Whether the keypad numbers are identified
with braille or not, there isn't any braille translation of the
on-screen instructions, without which the machine is useless.
Maybe, you're thinking, the problem isn't the brainless bureaucrats,
it's the brainless (or cynical) bankers and ATM builders, who figure
a pretense of accessibility will get them off the hook.
But that isn't it either. At the time the accessibility rules were
written, and to a great extent still today, there was no agreement
on the best way to make ATMs accessible to the blind.
More than 50 ideas have been proposed, including a "talking
machine," detailed braille instructions, an automated "bank-by-
phone" setup with a telephone handset and a keypad, and so on.
All these approaches present problems to some degree. Sample: if
you use a "voice guided" ATM, how do you keep others from
overhearing? Another difficulty is retrofitting the thousands of
machines already installed.
The bankers and ATM builders argued that the best thing to do was
leave the federal rules vague until the industry figured out a
practical approach.
The not-entirely-satisfactory solution in the interim has been to
(1) mark ATM keypads, input and output slots, etc., with braille,
and (2) send braille ATM instruction brochures or audio cassettes
to blind bank patrons requesting them.
The theory is that while ATM operation varies from machine to
machine, people conduct most of their transactions at just a few
locations, the operating sequences for which they can memorize.
The drawback of this approach is that you have to know that the
special instructions are available and you can only use the
machines you have instructions for.
Happily, the banks and ATM builders have been reasonably diligent
in trying to come up with more accessible equipment, some of which
is starting to show up in the marketplace now. About time, say
some advocacy groups.
"We don't want to see information technology [e.g., ATMs] become
the new curb," says Elga Joffee of the American Foundation for the
Blind. "There's certainly no reason to squelch evolving technology.
I just wish they'd hurry up and evolve it."
A COMPLAINT
Dear Cecil:
Read your Straight Dope regarding drive-up facilities for the
"visually impaired." Your column starts off OK but then switches
from "visually impaired" to just plain "blind" with comments that
show typical gross insensitivity for the handicapped.
Some who are legally blind and thus can't drive can see anywhere
from marginally to quite well when close up to the subject.
Your stereotype blind guy with opaque glasses and cane in your
cartoon goes beyond insensitivity, in my opinion.
As I'm one of the civil service bureaucrats who administer these
rules, I'd suggest you tread lightly, if at all, on the handicapped,
as they are organized and have representation that can bite pretty
hard when they have been deliberately slighted or shorted.
- --Ron Tilley, Madison, Wisconsin
Cecil replies:
At the risk of sounding like Rush Limbaugh, amigo, put a sock in it.
My main target in the column was the smartass letter writer, who
thought it was funny that a drive-up machine had braille on it. I
explained in language clear enough for anybody but a civil service
bureaucrat to understand the perfectly good reason the braille was
there.
If you think that bespeaks "typical gross insensitivity" not only
are you not qualified to administer rules, you probably shouldn't be
left alone around sharp objects.
As for the cartoon, while Slug Signorino may not be Mr. Sensitivity,
how else are you supposed to identify a blind person in what is,
after all, a caricature?
One more thing. Better watch those references to the "deliberately
shorted." You might start getting letters like the one you just
wrote from the vertically impaired.
- --CECIL ADAMS
Copyright 1994-1996 Chicago Reader
