Yesterday, I got to hang out with some of the fabulous Compass project engineers at Waterfront Station. As part of the Beta test, we invited a few testers to come try out the Compass Vending Machines and give us their feedback. We gave each tester a series of tasks to do on the machines, including buying new Compass Cards and Tickets, loading Cards with Stored Value and Monthly passes and viewing their transactions online. Most seemed to find it pretty intuitive, but many also gave us suggestions for changes to the fonts or layout of the screens that might make them more user-friendly.

Of course, once we unwrapped the Compass Vending Machines, we had lots of curious people stopping and asking questions, giving us a great opportunity to explain how Compass will work and what it will mean for them.

One of the people walking by was a deaf man who seemed really interested in what we were doing. With my very basic sign language skills, I was able to invite him to try the machines out and see for himself. I gave him the same script we were reading to the other testers and asked him to work his way through it.

I was a bit concerned that I wouldn’t be able to adequately communicate with him to answer any questions he might have, but it turns out I didn’t need to worry. He made his way through the tasks on the script with little difficulty and said he was impressed and found it easy to navigate. Success!

Did you know? Compass Vending Machines will have accessibility screens with audible prompts for people with visual disabilities.