How to make financial services more accessible to people with disabilities: regulator’s recommendations
The Bank of Russia recommends that financial institutions should use their remote channels to provide services to people with disabilities, elderly individuals and people with limited mobility as well as to check the powers of authorised persons acting on their behalf.
Such a check may also be required for implementing the ‘helping hand’ option when a person agrees with another client of a financial institution to appoint the latter as an assistant (authorised person).
To make remote channels more accessible to visually impaired people, they should be enabled to set the payment card PIN code by using the interactive voice response (IVR) or in the mobile application and enter the PIN code using Braille when visiting the bank office.
When people with disabilities or with low mobility contact a bank via remote channels, they should be entitled to a comprehensive advice from a bank employee, not only interaction with a chat bot or the IVR system. To this end, a client may inform the financial institution about his/her special needs in advance so that it could check this information with the state data systems or by using the Digital Profile upon the individual’s consent and subsequently take it into account when providing services.
To enhance accessibility of financial institution offices, they should be equipped with wheelchair ramps and platform lifts as well as audio navigation systems. If it is impossible to easily access the building of a bank due to its architectural specifics, the bank should provide services of field employees or remote services. The regulator believes that the opinions of people with disabilities, their organisations and associations should be taken into account when assessing further work to be done.