The year 2010 seems to have dawned with a lot of hope for persons with disabilities especially those with visual disabilities. The year began with an important meeting that took place at the auditorium of ICICI. No lesser person than the CEO of ICICI Ms. Chanda Kocher was the Chief Guest at this event. Many private and nationalized banks were represented at this event. Sabitra Kundu, Programme Manager, and Shrinivas Sawant, Area Director, South India Area Office and I , represented Sightsavers International. The mandate of the event to discuss how to make banking services accessible to the visually challenged. The event was organized by Chambers of Indian Industries (CII).
The event commenced with an inspiring welcome by Mr. Ram Vaidya of CII. Ms. Kocher spoke about the need for inclusive banking to take into account the needs of the disabled community. She reminded all that it was ICICI that for the first time installed a “talking ATM” way back in 2003 and promised that the bank would take more steps to provide more and more facilities to its disabled customers.
Mr. Amitabh Kumar of SBI gave a detailed account of the initiatives taken by his bank to make all services of banking accessible to the visually challenged customers. I spoke the difficulties faced at the ground level in spite of the fact that RBI has issued guidelines for accessible banking services. I also emphasized the fact that unless effective measures are taken and all the stakeholders informed of these meetings will become a mere eating house.
Dr Sam Taraporevala and Prashant Naik of Xavier Resource Centre for Visually Challenged demonstrated a software based solution for verification of cheques called “ESign”. It was meant to verify cheques using fingerprints. This is the safest since forging of fingerprint is impossible .
Ms. Kapur of ICICI informed the meeting of the steps taken by the bank to improve accessibility for the visually challenged clients.
In the end, a discussion took place wherein various suggestions were put forth and it was agreed that action points will be worked upon so that the meeting would be of real value. However, I was quite disappointed to see that many bankers were not aware of very simple technology and some of them still spoke with condescension.
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