Civic design bibliography


Extending prerendered-interface voting software to support accessibility and other ballot features

A pre-rendered user interface (PRUI) can be designed and audited independently of the voting machine manufacturers.

This paper describes software to be used on a PRUI system in conjunction with accessible technologies, including touchscreen interfaces, alternate input devices, and concurrent speech output (i.e., synchronized audio and visual displays).  A prototype was developed in Python.

The paper outlines a technical approach to minimizing the complexity of an accessible voting system, while including a rich set of options to support voters. Although initially envisioning an alternative interface, the design implements a universal interface, using synchronized audio and video output.

The program, pvote, is implemented in just 460 lines of code, written in Python.

Links

Yee, K. P. (2007). Extending prerendered-interface voting software to support accessibility and other ballot features. Paper presented at the 2007 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop, Boston, MA.