The scenario addressed by this European Standard is one where the cardholder operates the card accepting equipment (e.g. a cash dispenser, ticket machine, vending machine, mass transportation).
It is assumed that the card is a card conforming to ISO/IEC 7810.
Increasing use is being made of machine readable plastic cards. However, some potential user groups such as people who are elderly, disabled, blind or visually impaired could have difficulty in using existing card layouts to distinguish between cards with different functions such as a bank, telephone, pre-payment or social security card.
This standard addresses the needs of users who have difficulty reading non-embossed information on plastic cards, including persons with special needs, for example older people, minors, disabled people, visually impaired people, those with learning difficulties, first time users, and those not conversant with the local language.
The aim of this standard is to specify the design principles necessary for raised tactile symbols to be incorporated into machine readable cards. This proposed standard, in Clause 6, specifies the form, dimensions and location of tactile identifiers for application with ID-1 cards which do not contain other raised symbols. For cards which already contain raised symbols, an alternative system is specified in Clause 7.
It is the responsibility of the card issuer to decide which raised symbols to add to identify applications.
The alternative system, as specified in Clause 7, should only be used when the system specified in Clause 6 is not suitable (e.g. when the card already contains embossing). Symbols that comply with Clause 7 should be negotiated between cardholder and issuer.
Raised symbols could be introduced in multi applications cards only if issuer can assure that each of these applications will still be active during the card life cycle.
Annex A specifies the procedure for assigning symbols according to this standard.