Toward Accessible Mobile Money: A Voice-Driven, Biometrically Secured USSD Automation Framework for Visually Impaired Users
This research provides a crucial accessibility solution for visually impaired individuals in Africa, enabling independent and secure mobile money transactions.
This paper addresses the inaccessibility of mobile money services for visually impaired users by developing an Android-based middleware. The system improves task success rates from 65-75% to over 90% and reduces transaction completion time from 40-60 seconds to 12-15 seconds.
Financial inclusion has expanded significantly across Africa through mobile money services delivered primarily via USSD technology. However, visually impaired individuals continue to face accessibility and security barriers when conducting financial transactions. Current USSD systems are not designed for non-visual interaction, forcing users to rely on third-party assistance even for PIN entry, thereby increasing fraud exposure and reducing transaction confidence. Although alternative assistive technologies such as screen readers exist, they are not compatible with USSD operations, often causing sessions to time out before the user can complete a transaction. This paper presents an Android-based intelligent middleware that automates USSD transactions, integrates biometric-secured PIN injection, and introduces a privacy-preserving screen-dimming mechanism: Blackout Mode. The system leverages Android Accessibility Services, hardware-backed Keystore security, and on-device natural language parsing to enable independent, secure voice-based mobile money access. We show that the proposed solution improves task success rates from 65-75% to more than 90% and reduces transaction completion time from 40-60 seconds to 12-15 seconds, while also improving perceived security.