Universal access in e-voting for the blind

Since the inception of elections and election technologies, all segments of the voting population have never been granted equal access, privacy and security to voting. Modern electronic voting systems have made attempts to include disabled voters but have fallen short. Using recent developments in technology a secure, user centered, multimodal electronic voting system has been developed to study a multimodal approach for providing equity in access, privacy and security in electronic voting. This article will report findings from a study at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind where more than thirty-five blind or visually impaired participants used the multimodal voting system. The findings suggest that the proposed multimodal approach to voting is easy to use and trustworthy.