Financial inclusion: UBA launches braille account opening form for visually impaired

The United Bank for Africa (UBA) has launched a Braille account opening form to include those with visually impaired disabilities in the banking system.

The innovation was unveiled on Tuesday at the bank’s headquarters in Lagos.

Braille is a reading and writing system for blind and vision-impaired people. It is made up of raised dots that can be ‘read’ by touch.

Ugo Nwaghodoh, executive director of finance and risk management at UBA, said the innovation is expected to include those that have been excluded from the banking system.

“It is important to achieve financial inclusion and one of the key things that is driving it is that we desire to make sure everyone feels at home in our banking environment,” he said.

“Today what you have is people reading out the content of the account opening form for this category of customers. Sometimes they don’t get the right message on the account opening form or the person reading it to them is too fast or slow, and they don’t get the information.

“Our objective is to put this freedom in their hands and to make it possible for them to independently read the account opening form and understand what is required and make their choices.

“What we are driving with this is basically to include those that have been excluded from the banking system and indeed we have a lot of other similar initiatives in the pipeline.”

NO FINANCIAL INCLUSION WITHOUT ACCESS FOR PWDs

Also speaking at the event, Dare Dairo, general manager of the Lagos State Office for Disability Affairs (LASODA), said the initiative was a huge investment in fighting poverty among the vulnerable group.

He said it was exciting to see that a cooperate organisation like UBA is being serious with the drive for social inclusion of persons with disabilities by “creating this particular product for visually impaired customers”.

“When the financial infrastructure is not accessible to persons with disabilities, when a person like me goes to the bank and I cannot access the ATM, it means that the bank does not expect a person like me to have enough money to put in the bank,” Dairo said.

“There is no achieving financial inclusion without access for persons with disabilities. Because when the system has impoverished a significant population of the country, it means that population has become less productive, and less efficient and their quality of life has been reduced, which opens them to victimisation, and diseases. So, this is a huge investment in fighting poverty among the vulnerable group.”

On his part, Cobhams Asuquo, Nigeria’s leading visually impaired producer, singer, and songwriter, described it as practical inclusion.

“This is inclusion in practice because a lot of the time we talk about inclusion or inclusive society but we do not do them. I am directly impacted by this and it makes me understand the importance of practical inclusion,” he said.