Unicaja Banco and ONCE have signed a collaboration agreement to promote the social and financial inclusion of the blind and visually impaired through actions in different areas aimed at this objective.
This collaboration aims, therefore, to facilitate the accessibility of all Unicaja Banco’s financial products and services, so that the blind and visually impaired have maximum autonomy and confidentiality when using them.
The agreement, which is valid for two years and can be extended, has been signed this Thursday at ONCE’s headquarters in Madrid by Unicaja Banco’s Head of Digital Business, Joaquín Sevilla, and by ONCE’s Deputy Director General of Social Services for Affiliated Persons, Andrés Ramos.
The event has also been attended, on behalf of ONCE, by the Executive Director of Personal Autonomy, Technology and Accessibility, Carmen Millán, and the Head of the Information and Accessibility Unit, Luis Palomares. And on behalf of Unicaja Banco, by the Head of Coordination and Development of Digital Business, Diego David García.
Among other actions, ONCE will collaborate with Unicaja Banco by providing the necessary advice for the adaptation of branches, ATMs or touch-screen PoS. It will also provide guidance on accessibility in web pages and mobile applications and will provide useful information on the management of accessible documentation.
ONCE will also participate in quality tests and innovation labs of new solutions that so require it, providing personnel acting in the role of user, in order to provide guidance on the treatment of accessibility and the necessary requirements to cover an autonomous use by the blind and visually impaired.
Unicaja Banco’s commitment
Unicaja Banco undertakes to apply the guidance and recommendations provided within the initiatives it decides to implement, so that the visually impaired can use its products and services autonomously and confidentially.
According to ONCE’s Deputy Director General of Social Services for Affiliated Persons, Andrés Ramos, ‘accessibility to banking services is an essential condition to ensure inclusion and to improve the quality of life of people who are blind or have low vision’. ‘For this reason’, he added, ‘it is of vital importance for ONCE to establish this type of alliance with institutions such as Unicaja Banco, to continue promoting what has been our raison d'être for more than 84 years, the full inclusion of our group in society’.
Unicaja Banco’s Head of Digital Business, Joaquín Sevilla, said that ‘alliances such as this one, with fully consolidated and renowned institutions such as ONCE, allow us to show the commitment that Unicaja Banco has been assuming for years’. ‘Our CSR policy expressly includes the priority treatment of people with disabilities, renewed months ago with the adhesion to the sectoral protocol to strengthen the social and sustainable commitment of banking, especially with the elderly and people with disabilities’, he said, adding that ‘this agreement will benefit blind or low vision people, in the provision of both digital and face-to-face financial services, and also in the physical accessibility to branches’.
