A Consideration of Voting Accessibility for

Injured OIF/OEF Service Members: Needs

Assessment

July 2012

Contract E4064914

2010 Voting Technology and Accessibility Research – Military Heroes Initiative 

CFDA #90.403

PREPARED FOR:

Election Assistance Commission 

1201 New York Avenue, N.W. 

Suite 300

Washington, D.C. 20005

PREPARED BY:

Human Systems Integration Division 

Electronic Systems Laboratory 

Georgia Tech Research Institute 

Georgia Institute of Technology 

Atlanta, Georgia 30332
Annotated Literature Review Results

Voting Device Assessment Methods

Quesenbery, W. (2004). Defining a summative usability test for voting systems. A report from the UPA 

2004 Workshop on Voting and Usability, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This paper describes the work conducted by a group at the 2004 Usability Professionals’ 

Association annual conference in “creating a fully-defined usability test protocol for a voting 

system standard.” Building on the work of John O’Hara’s 2003 white paper, “A Proposed 

Approach to Testing the IEEE Usability/Accessibility Standards”, this paper attempts to describe 

identify and describe metrics for establishing pass/fail criteria for a conformance test.

Selker, T., Rosenzweig, E., & Pandolfo, A. (2006). A methodology for testing voting systems. Journal of 

Usability Studies, 2(1), 7-21.

This paper describes the importance of testing voting technology in realistic settings rather than 

lab style experiments. Testing in realistic settings exposes the challenges in voting process 

control as well as maintaining consistent voting experiences. For example, the authors 

discovered that poll workers and polling place conditions affect the usability of the voting 

process as much as voting machines. The paper concludes with a recommended protocol for 

testing voting technology in realistic settings.

Traugott, M. W. (2002). Testing alternative hardware and ballot forms. Paper presented at the meeting 

of the Working Group on Voting Technologies and balloting, held at the University of Maryland, College 

Park, MD.

This paper reviews methods for evaluating alternative hardware and ballot designs. The 

proposed methods include a series of basic research studies complemented with focus groups 

and an applied research study involving the development of a facility designed to mimic “real 

world” conditions. The author raises issues with each of the methods in terms of feasibility and 

cost.

Usability Professionals’ Association. (2007). LEO Kit: Usability Testing for Local Election Officials. 

Retrieved from http://www.upassoc.org/civiclife/voting/leo_testing.html.

The goal of this project was to create a testing kit that would allow individuals with no training 

in usability or human factors engineering to test the usability of ballots before an election. The 

kits are specifically designed to be used by local election officials (LEOs), hence the term the LEO 

kit. Available on the website for the Usability Professionals’ Association, the LEO kits consists of 

an instructional guide, a session script, session materials (i.e., forms for participants), a sample 

test report, and training workshop handouts.
User-Centered Design, Inc. (2006). Preliminary report on the development of a user-based conformance 

test for the usability of voting equipment.

This paper describes conformance tests for the usability of voting systems based on human 

performance testing. The tests are designed to determine whether a system meets performance 

requirements using potential voters as participants. As a conformance test, the system may 

either pass the test if it meets the requirements or fail if any requirements are not met. The

conformance tests do not involve individuals with disabilities. The authors suggest the 

development of another test method for users with disabilities.