Diebold, the US's largest maker of cashpoint machines, and electronic voting machines, is working with Scansoft to make its machines more useable by blind people.

The company is the second largest ATM maker in Europe. It has designed its latest machine, called Opteva, with the help of the US National Federation of the Blind.

But security concerns mean that blind customers will need to carry their own headphones. Rather than a speaker blasting out balance statements, visually-impaired punters will have to find the plug for their headphones.

Diebold has made talking machines before but they have used individual sound files. But cunning technology from Scansoft means they can now provide speech in up to six languages. Software converts text into voice so interfaces can be changed relatively easily, without re-recording lots of sound files.

More details on the Beeb here.®

Related stories

An MP3 player you can talk to...
Visioneer sells off scanner business
Primax, Visioneer and Xerox in ménage à trois