Utilisabilité et discrimination: étude préliminaire des machines à voter françaises

The purpose of this article is to provide an update on the ergonomics of voting machines currently being used in the world. In fact, these technologies are an obstacle for certain vulnerable populations: the elderly, people with disabilities, people who are illiterate and more generally those who are socially and culturally excluded. As a first step we take stock of the usability problems of different voting systems. Then we describe the ergonomic assessment that we have carried out on one of the voting machines currently being used in France. It concerns assessing the compliance with the guidelines and user tests carried out on people who are blind and who are aging. This study shows that the lack of usability of the voting machines is an important factor of discrimination and we offer some ideas to think about.