This critical step will help banks to ensure their ATM network meets new legal requirements from the American Disability Act (ADA) which come into force in March 2012.

After conducting extensive research and development immediately following the government ruling, Level Four is now creating the required updates to its Regression Test Manager product in BRIDGE:test. The solution will be demonstrable to external customers from August 15th 2011 via Webex and those interested in finding out more should contact the company.

Last month the U.S. Department of Justice issued a final ruling on new accessibility standards under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This ruling imposes new standards around ATM accessibility. It includes requirements on voice guidance, height and reach, layout and touch of keypad, screen visibility and Braille instructions.

All ATMs in the United States must become speech-enabled by March 15th 2012 in order to provide visually-impaired individuals with access to all services offered at the ATM.

Ian Kerr, CEO of Level Four, said: "The ADA ruling is a significant challenge for ATM deployers. To meet this deadline, updates to ATM terminals and software will be required. Especially in the case of voice guidance, these updates will need extensive testing so that errors and glitches between screen flows and voice commands do not occur. Left untested, such errors are not only costly to repair but can leave the bank open to non-conformity issues with the standards and also cause reputation damage when a customer encounters an ATM that is unusable."