Bankers are lobbying for exemptions from federal regulations that have yet to be adopted but are widely anticipated to require making automated teller machines more accessible to blind people.
The Justice Department has been working for several years to revise many of the access rules that have been imposed under the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Though the current rules say ATMs must be accessible to the blind, they do not specify how banks should ensure this. Most ATMs now include instructions in braille, but many banking executives expect the new rules to require them to install voice activation technology in their machines.
In comments submitted to the Justice Department, bankers and executives from nonbank ATM operators asked for a grandfather clause that would not require them to modify machines currently in use. The comment period was originally scheduled to close Jan. 28 but was extended until May 31.
Several people wrote that they were concerned that if they did not upgrade their older machines, the proposed rules, which are not expected to take effect for at least another year, could open them up to lawsuits by advocacy groups for the blind.
Requests for a grandfather clause appear in letter after letter from bank executives. They argued that their ATMs are in compliance with the current rules and should not have to be upgraded to meet any new standards.
“As a community banker, I ask the DOJ to require speech-enabled capability compliance only on new ATMs or those replaced due to obsolescence,” wrote Susan Grove-Markwood, the vice president of administration for First Citizens Bank of Presque Isle, Maine. “This would give my bank sufficient time to effect the needed changes, avoid burdensome costs, and avoid possible ATM closures that would result if banks were required to retrofit existing ATMs with speech-enabled technology.”
Also, a grandfather clause would protect banks whose ATMs are in compliance with the current rules from lawsuits, Ms. Grove-Markwood wrote in her April 3 letter.
Cary Whaley, the associate director for payments policy for the Independent Community Bankers of America, said in an interview last week that some banks have already been sued over ATM access, even though their machines are in compliance with current law, because technology advances have made it possible for machines to use voice activation.
“All we’re asking for is a stationary target for compliance,” he said. “Once we’ve built something and put something in,” it should not have to be retrofitted.
In his letter to the Justice Department, Mr. Whaley asked that any new rules not take effect until 18 months after the final version is published. The delay would “ensure that all parties have ample time to understand the new requirements, research market solutions, select the appropriate solution, and install and test the solution prior to the effective date,” he wrote.
Without a grandfather clause, the voice requirements could be even more burdensome to the independent sales organizations, which put ATMs in merchant locations, than to banks. The proposed rules would probably require only one machine per location to include voice technology. For example, a bank with four machines at a branch would only have to upgrade one. Bank of America Corp., which has more ATMs than any other banking company in the country, would have to install voice systems in only a portion its nearly 17,000 machines.
In contrast, the rules could force the Houston independent sales organization Cardtronics Inc. to upgrade almost all of the 25,000 machines it operates, because there are few merchants with multiple ATMs.
Michael E. Keller, the general counsel for Cardtronics, said in an interview that 65% of the ATMs it operates are owned by the merchants, which could be forced to foot the bill for the upgrades. However, most merchants have slim profit margins on their ATMs, he said; if they had to pay for a voice upgrade, many of them would choose to get rid of the ATMs, and Cardtronics would have to choose between losing a customer or subsidizing the upgrade.
Any new rules that do not include a grandfather clause for ATMs already in the field would be unfair to deployers, Mr. Keller said. “We do not know what the rules will be, or when they will be [implemented], and having said that, how can anyone criticize my company or any other company for buying a portfolio that includes machines that aren’t voice enabled?”
Jim McCarthy, the director of governmental affairs for the National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore, said the banking industry cannot ask for both an 18-month implementation delay and a grandfather clause. “I’d say that 18 months is too far out, given that the requirements aren’t particularly unique, and they weren’t unexpected.”
(The National Federation of the Blind has filed a lawsuit demanding that Cardtronics install ATM voice technology.)
“Talking ATMs are not new,” Mr. McCarthy said in an interview last week. “Banks have been quite aware for quite some time” that these policy changes were in the pipeline.
He also said that ATMs sometimes remain operational for 10 to 20 years, and that if a grandfather clause were included, it might be decades before blind people can talk to the machines.
Marsha Mazz, the technical assistance coordinator for the U.S. Access Board, the government agency that developed the proposed rules, said Friday that they do contain a narrow exemption: Companies would not have to upgrade machines that cannot support voice activation technology.
However, she questioned bankers’ contentions that their machines are all in compliance with the current rules and therefore would not have to be upgraded. “Just putting braille on a machine ... doesn’t necessarily make it an accessible machine under the current standards,” she said.
