New online system draws critics
Not all people with disabilities can use it, coalition says
SACRAMENTO — California’s new online voter registration system went live with much fanfare last week, but one group is not cheering: disabled voters.
On Tuesday, which was National Voter Registration Day, a coalition of groups that advocate for people with disabilities sent a letter to Secretary of State Debra Bowen saying that the new system doesn’t work for people with various disabilities.
Specifically, people with visual and reading impairments who need screen-reading technology to use a computer are not able to access the new registration system because the secretary of state’s website is not compatible with that technology.
Multiple federal laws, including the Help America Vote Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, require that government services are accessible to people with disabilities. With an Oct. 22 deadline to register to vote, the advocacy groups want the website made accessible as soon as possible.
“It’s something they should have investigated before launching the site,” said Andrew Mudryk, deputy director of Disability Rights California. “This situation shouldn’t be what it is.”
A representative of another organization, the California Foundation of Independent Living Centers, contacted the secretary of state’s office in late August offering to have people with an array of disabilities use the new system to make sure it was accessible.
“That didn’t happen. We wish it had,” said Teresa Fa-
vuzzi, executive director of the foundation. “We were paying attention and are making this call to action based on a real desire for people with disabilities to have equal access.”
The secretary of state has a Voting Accessibility Advisory Committee to advise her on issues regarding people with disabilities, but advocates say that committee was not consulted on the new system, either.
Nicole Winger, spokeswoman for Bowen, said, “We’re grateful for the disability community … bringing this to our attention,” but she did not know why neither the committee nor the advocates had been involved in the run-up to the launch of the site.
She said those groups are now involved in the process “to better understand the technical challenges and potential fixes.”
Winger could not say whether the website would be made accessible before the close of the voter registration period. But, she said, the secretary of state’s office staffers “are immediately on this.”
One of the biggest problems is the use of what is known as CAPTCHA technology, which is used on many websites to verify that a person, and not a machine, is actually entering information. Users have to type in a series of letters and or numbers that are displayed in a distorted format.
In the letter to Bowen, the advocates wrote that they were dismayed the technology was used because it “presents a well-known barrier to people who are blind or visually impaired and deaf or hard of hearing.”
The online system actually has great potential to help people with disabilities, advocates said, because it mitigates issues people face in having to physically travel to register and it would allow them to do so independently.
“It’s a really great opportunity for people with disabilities and we want to be part of it,” Favuzzi said.