Have Your Say on the New Public Services Smart Card

Written by Antoinette Fennell Friday, 06 August 2010

Image of Smart Card provided by John Gill The Department of Social Protection (formerly the Department of Social and Family Affairs) is currently developing a new Public Services Card, available to all Irish citizens, which will contain smart card technology.

One potential role of the proposed public service card is to provide more secure access to welfare benefits and to reduce the amount of benefit fraud. It is also proposed that the free travel pass, for those people who are entitled to free public transport, will be incorporated into the card.

NCBI is preparing a guideline document to pass on to the Department, aiming to improve the accessibility of the card and its related services. We would like to hear your experiences, both positive and negative, relating to smart cards and smart card services.

Smart Cards in a Nutshell

Smart Cards are cards that facilitate communication between people and technology. They store information or act as a “key”, with the potential to provide access to a range of services.

Smart cards may:

Provide access to a building, to information (such as personal or medical files stored on a computer) or to financial transactions (often requiring verification by a PIN code).
Act as a form of personal identification or store information about social welfare entitlements, blood type, allergies, and so on.
Allow access to a telecommunications service (such as a SIM card in a mobile phone).
Be used to access public transport or to pay tolls (such as electronic tags for toll payment).

A Smart Card is typically credit card shaped, however smart card technology can be embedded into many different objects, such as keyrings, tags or tokens. The term Smart Media can be more generally used to refer to all products (cards and other products) that contain this technology.

Accessibility Issues

Smart Cards provide an extremely useful tool for restricting access to particular services, for ensuring security and for promoting independence for citizens. However, while some accessibility issues are resolved by new technologies, developments often lead to new accessibility issues.

The key areas where accessibility issues may be encountered in relation to Smart Cards and associated systems are highlighted below:

Access to the terminal (anything the smart card interacts with, such as an ATM, door entry system or computer): The accessibility of the surrounding built environment in which the terminal is located must be considered. If the route of access to the terminal is not accessible, then the terminal itself is not accessible, regardless of its design.
User interface: The physical design of the terminal (any buttons, controls, visual displays, audible output, card entry slots and dispensers) can present a range of accessibility issues.
Labels and instructions: The size, contrast and typeface of labels and instructions, as well as the effects of other factors on legibility (such as inadequate lighting, reflections or glare, or wear and tear of labelling) can cause difficulty for many people when using terminals. Similarly the language used may be unnecessarily complex, or a person may not understand English.
Card design: the familiar and simple physical design of smart cards can mean it is difficult to ascertain the orientation of the card and what direction the card should be inserted into a terminal and to distinguish different cards from each other.
Authentication: The method of additional authentication that a card requires may include entry of the more familiar PIN code, or less commonly features such as fingerprint recognition or voice recognition. Whatever method is used is likely to come with individual accessibility issues, which need to be addressed.
Accessible literature and application forms: if accompanying instruction booklets, forms or other literature are not provided in a range of formats, or are written in overly complicated language, people with vision impairments, cognitive impairments, language or learning impairments, and people who do not have English as their first language are likely to encounter issues.
Accessible output: Anything that the terminal produces such as tickets, receipts and any information such as audible or visual output, may present accessibility issues for users with sensory, cognitive, learning or language impairments.
Training in the use of the system: unfamiliar and complex systems may require more than simple intuition when learning to use them. Particularly for people who don’t have previous experience of equivalent technology. Accessibility features are worthless if users do not understand how to use them.
Customer service: For people who need to follow up on smart card terminals, for example for lost or stolen cards, to report malfunctioning terminals or to access the services through an alternate route, customer service must be available to deal with these issues.

NCBI will develop a guideline document that will aim to address a number of the key issues mentioned above. But before we do so, we would like to hear from you.

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to submit to NCBI CFIT, to be included in the Smart Card guideline document, please complete the comments form below. Alternatively you can contact Antoinette Fennell directly by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or by phone at 01 8821 988.

Further Information on Smart Cards and Accessibility can be found at the following links:

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