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ATM accessibility in Europe
The European Commission updated the EU Disability Strategy last year following the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
March 29, 2011 by Flora Hamilton — European Manager, ATMIA
Here in Europe we are getting ready to tackle the growing issue of accessibility at ATMs. It is certainly not the most popular industry topic amongst ATM operators but it certainly needs to be embraced as it is not going to disappear from our radar and in fact will in the coming years directly hit the centre of our screens.
The European Commission updated the EU Disability Strategy last year following the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.The European Commission has the authority to develop standards in the public procurement space and whilst the commercial ATM operators may initially consider themselves off the hook but that isn’t really the case when you delve further into it.
The key terminology here in Europe is eAccessibility which translates as ‘improving the access of people with disabilities to the knowledge based society. And this, of course, includes self-service terminals.
The Commission started out some years ago with Phase 1 of the Standardisation Mandates 376 and 420 being issued. In simple terms Mandate 376 is concerned with the terminals and Mandate 420 the built-environment.
Mandate 376 has earlier this year gone into Phase2 which is the actual development of the European standard, so hence our industry’s need to get in direct dialogue with the teams commissioned to do this work. They will be writing the script for ICT manufacturers on the screen interface, where the audio socket should be positioned, what fonts will be acceptable and so on.
This should be completed in 2013 and it will cover self-service terminals, and of course, ATMs that are publicly procured (think Post Offices, state-owned savings banks and credit unions, etc).
The manufacturers and suppliers are rightly sitting up and taking notice – they will have to develop for these standards. So these standards will, de facto, become the industry standard, whether it be a commercial bank or a state-owned post office who is placing the order for an “accessible ATM.”
Some of the forward looking and innovative banks are also taking heed, but more should get interested sooner rather than later.
Mandate 376 can perhaps be viewed as the easier of the two standards. Once Mandate 420 gets into Phase 2 and starts to develop standards on ‘built environment’ at ATMs in public spaces, this is when our industry will truly feel the impact as have our colleagues in the U.S. from the recent new ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) regulations. The commercial operators will have to consider their ATMs in publicly-owned locations – civic spaces, rail stations, hospitals, etc.
On a positive note, the European Commission is very mindful of the U.S. ADA regulations and in fact, they aspire to them in parts so maybe we could start to think about the development of global standards.
It is great news for our industry that the third largest ATM deployer in Europe, La Caixa of Spain, is committed to improving accessibility at its ATMs.
Their contribution to this issue at both a national and through special commission projects on a European level is to be applauded and ATMIA Europe is deeply indebted to them for their generous hosting of our first Innovation Forum in Barcelona next month.The topic is, of course, accessibility at ATMs!
About Flora Hamilton
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ATM Industry Association (ATMIA)
The ATM Industry Association, founded in 1997, is a global non-profit trade association with over 10,500 members in 65 countries. The membership base covers the full range of this worldwide industry comprising over 2.2 million installed ATMs.
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