Last Updated on September 21, 2026 by Craig Allen Keefner
The Kiosk Association Accessibility Committee had a very good meeting this past Tuesday September 15th, 2026 with the U.S. Access Board. We had a strong group on both sides of the table, good discussion, and—most importantly—a real opportunity to get better technical feedback as the industry moves into new types of self-service, AI, payments, and customer interaction.
The main point we put forward was simple: accessibility needs to follow the transaction, not just the device.
For years, it was relatively easy to point at a kiosk or a terminal and say, “That is the thing we need to make accessible.” That is no longer always the case. A customer transaction can involve the physical unit, a touchscreen, payment terminal, mobile phone, QR code, voice interface, AI system, back-end identity check, and sometimes a human employee. The real test is whether the customer can successfully complete the transaction.
Who Attended
Kiosk Association Accessibility Committee Attendees
- Craig Allen Keefner — Executive Director, Kiosk Association; CEO, The Industry Group
- Michael O’Hare — Tech for All
- Jim Morgan — Senior Director, Government Affairs, LG Electronics USA
- Nicky Shaw — Storm Interface
- Alison Long — Dot Inc.
- Sam Collier — Vispero
- Jeremy DuPont — KIOSK Information Systems
U.S. Access Board
- Sachin Pavithran — Chairperson
- Francis Spiegel
- Kathy Eng
- Josh Schorr
- Juliet Schultz
- Christopher Kuczinski — Legal
What We Covered
We covered a lot of ground, but it was all connected by the same theme: the customer experience is no longer confined to one box, one screen, or even one technology.
We used examples such as EV charging, self-service retail, payment terminals, smart vending, lockers, parking, transit, drive-thru systems, and government service workflows. In all of those cases, the customer may need to arrive, reach the equipment, identify the service, operate an interface, pay, receive service, get help, and complete the transaction privately.
That is the model we presented:
Arrive → Reach → Identify → Operate → Pay → Receive Service → Get Help → Complete Privately
The question is not just, “Is the device accessible?” The question is, “Can the customer actually finish?”
The materials provided to the Board framed accessibility as one foundational layer in a broader transaction-based framework that also includes safety, communications, privacy, identity, payments, sector rules, cybersecurity, and operational reliability.USAB_
Demonstrations and Examples
Alison Long and Dot Inc. gave a very nice exposition of the new Dot Inc. braille pad. It was a good practical reminder that accessibility is not theoretical. New hardware, alternative interfaces, tactile interaction, and more flexible digital access methods are moving quickly.
Mike also presented on SurePOS, which gave the conversation a useful real-world point of reference around customer-facing payment and retail transactions.
We also discussed the emergence of new modalities:
- Conversational AI and voice interaction
- Gesture-based interaction
- AI-mediated customer service
- Visual, tactile, audio, and multimodal interfaces
- Mobile-app, QR-code, and device-to-device transaction paths
The committee’s position is that voice, AI, apps, QR codes, and gesture can all be useful accessibility tools. They become a problem when any one of them becomes the only way a customer can complete a transaction.
That is especially important with conversational AI. In a drive-thru, for example, the menu board, microphone, speaker, AI, payment system, loyalty program, and employee can all be part of one transaction. If the AI cannot understand the customer—or the customer cannot use the voice path—there has to be another usable way through. The same concern applies to QR-only, app-only, or mobile-only designs.USAB_Accessibility_
Important Feedback
Kathy Eng made an important point that we should explicitly include cognitive disability in our framework and conversation, rather than concentrating primarily on physical access, visual access, hearing access, or technical ICT compliance.
Francis Spiegel also emphasized the importance of considering the full range of audio-related accessibility needs. That means not treating “audio” as a single checkbox. We need to think about audio instructions, speech output, voice input, intelligibility, privacy, volume, captions, alternative outputs, background noise, communication failures, and the ability to recover when the system does not work as intended.
This was valuable feedback. As self-service moves toward more AI and conversational interfaces, cognitive load, clarity, understandable instructions, error recovery, timeouts, confirmation, and a path to assistance become just as important as the physical placement of a button or the presence of a screen reader.
Topics for Future Work
Several topics came up that the Kiosk Association can continue to develop with the U.S. Access Board and with the broader industry:
- Cognitive accessibility and cognitive disability.
- Audio access in all its forms, including voice input and voice output.
- Conversational AI and voice ordering.
- Gesture and other emerging interaction modalities.
- Corporate/private-sector transactions versus government-service transactions.
- Customer-facing accessibility versus employee-facing accessibility.
- Accessibility requirements and expectations in procurement.
- ANSI and ETSI standards activity.
- The relationship between physical accessibility, ICT accessibility, payments, privacy, security, identity, and human support.
- The need for a usable fallback when AI, apps, QR codes, voice systems, biometrics, or other automated systems fail.
The government-versus-corporate distinction was particularly interesting. The customer’s underlying need does not change much: people still need to obtain information, navigate the service, communicate, pay if necessary, receive the product or service, and get help. What changes is the regulatory, procurement, operational, and accountability environment around that transaction. The discussion materials identified government services as a useful proving ground because the service journey and procurement responsibilities can often be defined more clearly.USAB_Accessibility_
Where We Go From Here
This was not a request for the Access Board to approve a Kiosk Association certification program or endorse an entire global regulatory platform. It was a request for the Board to help us pressure-test the accessibility part of the work: the transaction model, the terminology, and the gaps that emerge where physical access, ICT, AI, payments, identity, privacy, and human support all come together.
That is the encouraging part of this meeting. Going forward, the Kiosk Association can look forward to better and more informed technical feedback from the U.S. Access Board as we continue to develop this work.
We have an opportunity to get ahead of the curve. Instead of waiting until conversational AI, voice ordering, gesture interfaces, mobile-only service models, and autonomous transactions are already everywhere, we can bring manufacturers, operators, accessibility specialists, payments experts, and government stakeholders together now.
The goal is straightforward: build self-service systems that work for more people, in more real-world situations, without forcing customers into one narrow technology path.