Citizens with disabilities must be considered in the process of conceiving optimal consumer services. This includes banking and finances, which have gone through many changes from the consumer’s perspective over the last decades. However, this transformation requires the input from people with disabilities so everybody can enjoy their rights on an equal basis with others. The AccessibleEU consortium, alongside the European Blind Union and the European Banking Federation (EBF), conveyed that message during a hybrid event organised in EBF’s headquarters in Brussels on July 1st.
In her opening remarks, Maria Luis Albuquerque Commissioner for Financial Services and the Savings and Investments Union, stressed the importance of increasing banking literacy among Europeans, thus enabling all citizens to operate more autonomously in this domain.
Held a few days after 28th June, the deadline for implementing the European Accessibility Act (EAA), Immaculada Placencia, Senior Expert in Disability and Inclusion at the DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion at the European Commission, reminded attendants of the requirements for consumer banking services in the EAA. “Accessibility is about personalisation and letting people make their own choices”, she stated.
In line with this, participants discussed how inclusive financial services are a useful tool to foster economic participation of persons with disabilities. In order for this to happen, Sébastien de Brouwer (EBF) called for a constant dialogue between stakeholders in this area, thus being able to adapt the increasing technological changes to groups such as persons with disabilities and older people.
This last element was also widely discussed during the conference. “In the EU, there are a series of technical requirements to help providers design their financial services in an inclusive way”, stated Alejandro Moledo, Deputy Director and Head of Policy at the European Disability Forum. “Banking companies need to invest in accessibility within their teams. When it comes to access to information, they must also consider multimodality and allow us to choose the format in which we wish to receive information”, he added. At the same time, Heidrun Mollenkopf (AGE Platform) called for further efforts in the reduction of the digital divide and advocated for keeping alternatives to digital solutions.
The main challenges for the blindness and partial sight communities
The conference also allowed some of our organisation’s representatives to talk about EBU’s commitments in the domain of accessible financial services. “For a long time, we have advocated for the design of more accessible payment terminals for our communities”, said Lars Bosselmann, our Executive Director. “A topic which is high in our agenda, some of our main challenges in this domain include the extended use of touchscreens or the lack of accessibility of submitting buttons”, he added.
Members of our governance also made their contributions to the conference. Jakob Rosin, Board Member and President of the Estonian Blind Union, talked about underscoring the lack of user-friendliness of having multiple solutions to make these devices more accessible. “Rather than focusing on having multiple solutions, we need to bear in mind more user-testing tools, those will allow you to better understand the needs of consumers with visual impairment”, he added. Another Board Member, Andreas Hasverg (Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted) participated in the discussion too, flagging the issues encountered by our communities when using online banking applications, thus calling for consideration of the principles of universal design when developing them.
Operating independently as a banking consumer is essential to help us live life on an equal basis with others. Overall, our organisation stated that, through its different working structures, it will keep advocating for our economic and financial rights and helping to pinpoint the barriers to be removed. The event on July 1st was a very useful starting point on that long journey.