Co-operative have recently made a great step towards making their cash machines accessible to the blind by introducing ‘talking’ cash points. On May 23rd they joined the wave of banks making audio-assisted cash machines available to their customers with 400 new ATMs going live.
Talking ATMs deliver private, spoken instructions through a headset which is plugged in to the ATM. High contrast screens are also being introduced (a UK first) which will aid many partially sighted customers. The customer will be able to complete transactions on their own in a convenient environment at any time.
The Bank will launch over 1,000 ATMs with talking functionality by the end of 2013, with a further 1,000 planned for 2014. The ‘talking ATM’ functionality will eventually be available at all Co-operative Bank branch ATMs and at most ATMs at Co-operative Food stores.
Co-operative have already been confirmed as part of the RNIB’s ‘Make Money Talk‘ campaign along with Barclays, Lloyds, Nationwide, LINK, RBS, VISA and Natwest. All of these banks are at different stages in their plans to introduce ATM with a audible function, for the visually impaired. Now HSBC and Santander remain the only major banks yet to make any meaningful effort to introduce talking cash points.
The Make Money Talk campaign has been really effective so far and has made many banks commit to bringing in audio-assisted machines in the near future. When Make Money Talk began, only one in one thousand UK cash machines could talk. That number is set to improve exponentially in the next few years:
- RBS and Natwest have both announced plans to start rolling out talking cash machines in 2014 as part of a general replacement of ATMs. 80% of their machines will be speech enabled by mid 2015.
- A statement from Lloyds last year suggested that they will begin to make talking cash points available in 2013.
- At this stage, Co-operative are well ahead of the game and are only the second bank to implement the talking machines. The other is Barclays where 75% machines now have a ‘talking’ function. That’s 3,000 ATMs, fulfilling their commitment made in 2011 as the first major bank to sign up to the RNIB campaign.
Congratulations are due to Co-operative bank for making their machines more accessible and to the RNIB Make Money Talk campaign for nudging them in the right direction!