We will rush right ahead to Dr. Redish.

DR. REDISH: Madame Chairman, members of the committee, and other
attendees, I appreciate the opportunity to address the hearing today.
The perspective I bring is a specialist of clear writing information,
design, and usability.

I think my remarks are really complimentary to Bill\'s who talked about
the equipment. And while agree with Bill that you can\'t have a workable
system if the technology doesn\'t work, I think that and I am going try
to make the case that the information related to is more than lipstick
on the bulldog. It\'s a really important part of the entire system.

My name is Janice Redish. I go by the nickname Ginny which is what\'s on
the cards. I am a linguist by training with a doctorate from Harvard. I
have been in this business for more than 25 years helping government
agencies and private companies to make information clear and
understandable to the people who have to use that information.

I began my work in this field in 1978 with a very large federally funded
grant in which my group studied the problems that people have with
public documents and found ways to help both the people who created
those documents and the people who have to use them.

From 1978 to 1992, I was an institute director and then a vice president
of American Institutes for Research, a not-for-profit scientific
research and development firm in Washington D.C. whose founder is the
applied psychologist that Bill was just talking about as the person who
just talked about human factors, John Flanagan who works in the aviation
industry, not part of what I did with the institute when I got there.

When I was there, I was leading an interdisciplinary team of linguists,
psychologists, anthropologists, human factors specialists, as well as
writers, editors, and designers who had plans to make documents like
regulations, forms, letters, instructions clear and usable.

Since 1992, I have been president of my own firm Redish and Associates
which is a consulting firm in Bethesda, Maryland.

Many of the projects I take on take complex documents; federal, state
regulations for example, and revise them using a well-developed and
known methodology called user-centered design. The documents are legally
accurate, legally sufficient, and also very usable.

One of my main points is to have you understand they are not mutually
exclusive goals, documents that actually work for people. I am a Fellow
and former member of the Boards of Directors of the Society for
Technical Communication, a society of 20,000 specialists in clear
writing. I am also a founding member and former Board of Directors
member of the professional society of usability specialists, the
Usability Professionals\' Association.

This year I have participated in a workshop organized by UPA\'s voting
and usability projects where a multidisciplinary group \-- some of the
other members are in the room today -- developed guidance on usability
for the voting experience that led to contributing an informational
annex to the IEEE P1583.

I would like us to think about the task of voting. Imagine, if you will,
the voter doing this task. From walking into the polling place, to going
to into the voting booth, to walking out again.

In any situation, in any task, we have a person \-- and to me that is
what human factors is about. It\'s about that person in this larger
system. In this case, our voter is trying to do the task, and we have
all the people and materials that the person has to interact with to
accomplish the task.

Those people or those materials can help or hinder the voter in
accomplishing the task. Of course, the most important material the voter
interacts with is the ballot.

And to me and I think to a voter the ballot includes the instructions
for voting, the labels on the control, the formats for voting like
having to draw arrows, press out chads, touch the screen, as well as
actual candidates and ballot questions.

The way the ballots is written and formatted whether on paper or
computer screen can help or hinder the voter. That is what Kim was
saying when he said the ballots design really matters.

The words, and pictures or symbols on the ballot, the way those words or
pictures or symbols are laid out, the way they\'re put together into
sentences and paragraphs are all critical to whether the voters succeed
or not in voting the way they want to vote.

This is where professional specialists in clear writing sometimes called
plain language, information design, and visual design come in. These are
professions in which we have research-based, evidence-based guidelines,
and best practices that can make the difference between a ballot that
causes voters to do something they didn\'t want to do and a ballot that
allows voters to quickly and easily vote for candidates of their choice.

There is research in many fields including cognitive psychology,
ergonomics, linguistics, and visual design that informs these guidelines
and best practices.

To give you an example, research shows that we all read all capital
letters more slowly than upper and lower case letters and that we\'re
more likely to stop reading when the text is in all capital letters.

In addition, in most type fonts all capital letters take up to 30
percent more spaces than the same letters in lower case, and yet we see
paragraphs of instructions on ballots in all capital letters.

Clear writing and plain language refer to the way the words are put
together into sentences and paragraphs. Information design and visual
design refer to the layout, presentation, formatting of the ballot,
whether it is on paper or on a screen. Some people specialize on one,
some in the other.

Some like myself and others specialize in both clear writing and
information design.

And most specialist who do clear writing and information design also
take a very broad view of the work required to do this to create a
successful product, and that broader view is often called usability
because that is what we\'re trying to achieve; a usable system, a usable
document.

So if I ask you what is usability, what is a usable document, what\'s a
usable system, my answer has always been my answer has always been that
the successful piece of writing, successful information design,
successful system means users can find what they need, understand what
they find, act appropriately on that understanding in the time and
effort they think this task is worth because as Bill and Kim just said
dropoff is people just saying I\'ve had enough.

All of these help at all levels of the voting process. So, working with
the manufacturers to plan technologies for voting, to creating screen
layout and instruction for new voting systems, to working with local
election officials to develop ballots for specific elections, signage,
and instruction for voters and for poll workers.

Now I realize there are constraints on what could be done, as Bill was
talking about. The technology system. There are constraints on what can
be done on the documents, the material, the ballot.

Sometimes imposed by technology. Sometimes imposed by federal, state, or
local law. When we take a long view, we may find changing the
technology, changing the law, may be the best way to get systems and
documents that meet the needs of all voters. Even working within
constraints, there are ways of making ballots easier for users, for
voters.

This is a sample paper ballot used in a general electric in 2000. Now on
a real project and I and the other usability professionals would have
worked closely with the local officials. Creating or revising any
document would have to be a team effort.

So, my comments today must be taken in the spirit of constructive
critique and suggestions because I am not specifically working with the
people who know what the legal constraints are. Here is the top of the
ballot. It is including instructions.

I could comment on almost every line, but let me look at the piece in
the middle that describes the sections of the ballot. So before the
voter gets to actually doing things, they are confronted with
explanations.

Part of this says partisan section. To vote the partisan section of the
ballot, you may cast a straight ticket, a split ticket, or mixed ticket.
Many voters may be lost here because they don\'t know what partisan
means in this context. You have to remember that typical voters may not
be comfortable with this language.

Electric officials spend so much time in the language of elections it\'s
hard for them to remember the typical voters may not know the same
language.

The problem is not unique to election officials. It\'s a problem with
jargon in any field. The language that we use every day becomes second
nature to us, and we forget that this is not everyday language that
people who don\'t work in it every day may not know our words. And
voting is not an everyday activity.

All the instructions are clustered at the top of the ballot. Research
shows people tend to skip over this because they want to do the action.
So, the action is down here.

Research shows that it is actually more useful to put the instructions
at the time and moment when people are actually going to start needing
them. This may need rethinking, how the ballot is laid out, and the
words used on it might better serve the voter if we did that.

I spent a few minutes talking about showing the importance of clear
writing, information, design, and usability of ballots, but let\'s go
back to thinking about the voter and the entire task of voting where
completing the ballot is only a part of the task.

There are other people and materials that are a part of the overall
voting task. Before voters get to polling place, we have instructions
they receive about where to go to vote and how to vote. It\'s critical
that these be clear, too.

For example, my understanding is the instructions sent out to Florida
voters who used the Votomatic machine saying on step four vote all
pages. Shortly after the 2000 election, the New York Times reported that
the get-out-the-vote workers in some precincts were reminding voters as
they walked in to vote all pages.

Unfortunately, the butterfly design put one race for President across
two pages, and I don\'t know but we might speculate this instruction, in
fact, caused some of the misunderstanding that contributed to
over-voting. So, instructions really can have an important effect.

You may be thinking getting this right is complicated and it is, but
that is what professional technical communicators do. They solve
problems on how to communicate complex information so people who need
that information understand it.

We have a proven technique usability testing to find out if people who
will be using the information understand it and finding that out before
it causes problems. When the voter comes to the polling place, signage
becomes important.

Where the signs are put, what they say, how they use arrows or other
symbols, all these instructions and signs can help or hinder voters. And
specialists can work with election officials to make sure that signs
help, not hinder.

Bill was talking about poll work and training. Poll workers were part of
the voting experience and process. Their training and understanding was
critical. They\'re the human face of voting and their communication
skills can actually effect whether an eligible voter even gets the
opportunity to vote.

So just as we picture the voters interacting with people and materials,
we have to picture the poll workers trying to accomplish their tasks.
And instructions for poll workers and training materials are also
important.

I would like to finish up by saying I think one of the goals of the
Election Assistance Commission must make the experience of voting as
comfortable as possible for as many people as possible. Traditionally in
this country we have had low turnout to vote. We don\'t know to what
extent low turnout is due to people trying to vote is an overwhelming
material.

My guess is the experience is overwhelming to many people to come to a
place they don\'t often visit into a bewildering array of signs, to
instructions that are not clear, to a ballot that confuses rather than
helps.

And I\'m concerned a frustrating experience may lead to not bothering to
trying again in another election. I urge the Election Assistance
Commission to adopt a standard that the ballot and all signage and other
instructions in the polling place must be understandable and usable to
all voters.

I urge the commission to provide guidance to election officials in clear
writing, and information design, and usability, and to remember that
guidance must be written clearly.

In fact, a model. You\'re users, and a model for the level of guidance
that would be appropriate might be the Department of Justice\'s ADA
checklist for polling places. The way to find out if a particular ballot
is understandable and usable is to conduct usability testing with
representative users on a sample ballot.

I think in addition to usability testing for certification of machines
we should also use usability testing on a smaller scale for specific
local ballots for specific elections.

With all the focus on security, I am afraid it is too easy to forget
voting is about people and the materials that communicate the voting
process. So, I urge you to focus on usability, and accessibility, and
clear communications as critical components of a standard. Thanks. I am
happy to answer questions.

CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: Thank you.

MS. HILLMAN: Clear communication. Things that are written and things
that are heard. So if the communication is instructions on ballot or
signage on the wall is developed and written so that the reader gets it
right away, it\'s easy, it\'s user friendly.

Are those same words clear if a person were hearing them audio
particularly the instructions on the ballot so that the voters who are
sight impaired and use audio instructions will have clear instruction?

DR. REDISH: I think you bring up a very important point, and that is all
users should be thought of when the communications are developed.

I definitely believe that a good job of doing instructions can work both
for those who are seeing it and for those who are hearing it but only if
both of those users are thought of in the beginning.

Your point would be, in fact, another reason for my suggestion that
instead of putting all the instructions in front on the top of the
ballot they be divided up and come at the moment when someone needs them
before that action because what you are doing is putting a greater
burden on people hearing it to have to remember it because they
wouldn\'t have their eyes to go back up and look at it.

We know that there is memory limitations. All humans have memory
limitations. That is one of the reasons for sighted users we recommend
the instructions be broken up and put at the moment people need them.

My suggestion is yes we can satisfy both of those audiences but only if
we think of them from the beginning.

MS. HILLMAN: What is that wonderful term you used?

DR. REDISH: Memory limitation.

MS. HILLMAN: That\'s what it is. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: Jim?

MR. ELEKES: The question becomes with the memory limitations if we\'re
developing or the proposal is to develop technology perhaps you might
recommend that there be controls on audios so that if persons could
repeat the communication or cut the communications short, or do what is
necessary to tailor the audio in order that the person can take it in
bites sizes, as it were, and respond to it accordingly?

DR. REDISH: That would certainly be a good idea and might be useful to
be able to go back and read through something. Not just an immediate
repetition but have an instruction but even that says tell me the
instructions again.

MR. ELEKES: I know and I appreciate your discussion of large print and
so on. However, when it comes to visually impaired population, many
individuals who have low vision, for instance, prefer material in all
caps with dark on light contrasting backgrounds because they find it
more easily readable.

Likewise, the individuals who have a preference, as I do, for
instructions in Braille one page the standard 54-line page of hard print
in 14 point type is 4.6 pages of Braille.

Do you have any thoughts or ideas on how individuals who have those
diverse needs might be compensated when it comes to usability?

DR. REDISH: You raise a very important and interesting point. I have
been involved in the past few years through the National Cancer
Institute in doing usability studies with blind and low vision users on
web sites.

My colleague, Duey McMary Dufunnus and I have come to the conclusion
there is no one solution for everybody. When it comes to dealing with
the needs of low-vision problems, the needs are so different from each
other that we think you have to have multiple solutions.

So having Braille instruction ins a that meets the needs of most Braille
users is an important addendum, if you will. That\'s a different
physical thing from the instructions that would go to other people.

And actually I don\'t see why if we\'re going to technology, there
should be lots of ways of offering the material, and different tech
sizes, different ways of doing all caps or not because we know for
typical readers all caps are not the best way.

And I think if we really truly mean to be accessibility, we have to have
multiple presentations of the same material.

MR. ELEKES: Just to follow-up. If you have an LTD screen and using
navigator software and go up and, down likewise you should be able to
contrast the background and prints as well as the print size in order to
facilitate usability.

DR. REDISH: We do that on PC\'s today. I don\'t see why \-- If we can do
that on our computers, I don\'t see why we can\'t allow that to happen
on other computer-based machines.

MR. ELEKES: Thank you.