New lottery system for visually impaired retailers in Illinois

The Illinois Lottery is introducing a new system for visually impaired retailers as part of its ongoing recruitment initiative.

The Lottery on Thursday unveiled a software program that helps visually impaired retailers verify winning tickets, an inability in the past which has prevented them from participating in the state lottery. A visually impaired retailer in downtown Chicago lamented that she was at the mercy of employees and customers to verify winning tickets.

Now a software program developed by Rhode Island-based GTECH Corp. will use a computer to read and speak ticket numbers.
It’s a development that has the attention of the 100-member Illinois Committee of Blind Vendors, which expects to see some retailers join the Lottery program.

“Anything that talks and that is adaptive they are interested in having,” said John Gordon, chairman of the Illinois Committee of Blind Vendors. “They are always interested in accessibility.”

The product won’t bring a significant number of new retailers to the Illinois Lottery program, but it will help the organization maintain its record–setting sales pace. The more than 7,700 Lottery retailers sell an average of $254,000 tickets each year, said Courtney Hill, an Illinois Lottery spokesman.

“Every retailer we can add makes a big difference,” Mr. Hill said. “One of the Lottery’s focuses this year is on retail recruitment.”

Current Lottery sales of $1.4 billion are $141 million ahead of sales for the same period last year. The Illinois Lottery had $1.84 billion in fiscal 2005 revenue, its second consecutive record year.
The GTECH software is free, but all Lottery retailers pay a $50 application fee and $10 a month if they chose to get results online.

The software for visually impaired retailers is part of a program to recruit more retailers and drum up more sales. The Illinois Lottery has added 235 new outlets this year and tweaked or introduced new games to attract players. The latest game called Pick’n’Play will be launched next month.