Making Voting Accessible
Plain Language & Plain Interaction
What if anyone could vote 
on any device?

•	Dana Chisnell, Usability Works
•	Drew Davies, Oxide Designs
•	Kathryn Summers, University of Baltimore

Tablet, smartphone, computer…

•	Users can use their own device and their own, familiar, assistive technology

•	Optimized for low literacy users
•	Plain language
•	Plain interaction

About the ballot

•	NIST medium complexity ballot, modified slightly 

•	18 pages

•	14 races, one constitutional amendment, two ballot measures

About the testing

•	Paper prototype 
•	18 participants
•	4 days
•	16 versions
•	Digital Prototype
•	15 participants
•	4 days
•	4 versions

Participants with 
•	Low literacy skills (4th to 8th grade reading level)
•	Advanced age
•	Mild cognitive impairments (i.e., short-term memory loss)
Plain language

•	Ginny Redish and Dana Chisnell (2009) demonstrated the crucial role of plain language in ballot instructions for successful voting

•	In our testing, we found that participants with lower literacy tended to act on every single word
Making it plain

•	Language tweaks that impacted voter success:

•	Eliminating ambiguous words
•	Reducing election jargon 
•	Reducing the amount of text on key screens
•	Introductory
•	Review
•	confirmation
Button text
•	Several participants struggled with the “see additional candidates” button

•	To ease use
•	Text was simplified
•	Jargon was eliminated
Review screen text
Cast your ballot
Necessary hurdles
Plain language findings

•	Minimal text, short sentences

•	Specific, concrete, familiar words

•	No jargon

•	Large typesize
Plain interaction
•	Transition from paper ballots  electronic interfaces makes interaction design crucial

•	Previous research with low literacy participants on websites found that distractions, such as links, shifts in locus of action & sidebars, had detrimental effects on task success (Summer & Summers, 2005; Summers & Summers, 2006)

•	Our ballot interface confirmed that distractions can similarly impede the voting process
Plain interaction
•	We started off simple, and had to get even more simple:

•	Focused on immediate action
•	Eliminated supplemental content
•	Removed extra icons
•	Removed the BACK button from all the screens in the Review process
Instruction screen
Ballot item instructions
Text entry
Plain interaction findings
•	Find out what behaviors your participants want to use, and make them work if you can…

Our ballot lets users scroll by  
•	pressing a button
•	dragging the scrollbar
•	flicking a finger 

Plain interaction findings
•	Allow the users to touch anywhere on a name to select it

Supporting error recovery
Plain interaction findings

•	Support immediate action

•	Eliminate distractions and disruptions

•	Make natural user behaviors successful if possible

•	Little things have big impact

•	Iterative testing is a good way to be brilliant

Unfinished work
•	A toggle to have instructions and messages read aloud

•	A way to pause and resume voting 

•	Additional QA testing to perfect compatibility with assistive technologies