Assessment of Current Challenges
In the first phase of the Accessible Voting Technology Initiative, five research partners are examining different aspects of election technology.
- University of Utah is defining the demographics of the population and investigating social barriers, building on surveys such as the 2008 Survey of the Performance of American Elections, conducted by the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project.
- University of Washington Center for Technology and Disability Studies is documenting the current state of accessible voting systems. This work is being done through expert assessments in collaboration with the NIST voting systems lab and the National Federation of the Blind.
- University of Colorado Denver Assistive Technology Partners is identifying gaps in accessibility for specific disabilities and matching them to existing and emerging assistive technology tools which could be employed to bridge these gaps.
- Georgia Tech Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access is conducting an ethnographic study of the elections context from the perspective of voters with disabilities, looking for barriers and enablers to participation.
The preliminary results from this analysis will be used to inform other work in this project, including the Accessible Election Design Workshops and the Open Innovation Challenge.