A Case Study on the Inclusiveness of Biometric Technologies for Individuals with Congenital Disabilities

Biometric technologies are often advertised as a user-friendly way to authenticate individuals based on behavioural or biological characteristics. In recent years, biometric recognition has become ubiquitous in various application domains ranging from smartphone unlocking to border control. With the evolution of biometrics, ethical concerns have emerged with respect to the fairness or inclusiveness of these technologies. While many research efforts have been devoted towards investigating race and gender, little to no efforts have been put into studying the inclusiveness of biometric systems for disabled individuals. This work aims to address this gap in knowledge and shed light on this important matter. To this end, an online questionnaire as well as a usability study with smartphone biometrics was conducted with groups of disabled individuals. Obtained findings indicate disparities in the difficulties faced by disabled individuals compared to nondisabled individuals. Furthermore, it was observed that nondisabled individuals perceive biometric systems as being more inclusive towards disabled individuals than people living with disabilities perceive them to be. Moreover, the conducted usability experiment confirmed that accessibility issues are a real challenge for disabled individuals when using biometric systems.