5 Tips For Financial Institutions To Deliver An Inclusive Digital Banking Experience
Modern digital banking goes beyond innovative features, flashy interfaces, and omnichannel services. At its core, a truly modern banking platform is built on the foundation of accessibility and ease of use, ensuring that all individuals, regardless of ability, can navigate and utilize it seamlessly.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) sets clear standards for accessibility, making it critical for financial institutions to embrace these guidelines. Here are five tips to help financial institutions enhance inclusivity in their digital banking platforms.
1. Keep Accessibility In Mind From The Start
An inclusive digital banking platform integrates accessibility options into its very core. Financial institutions must view accessibility not as an afterthought or a mere strategy to attract new customers or members, but as an essential aspect of the digital banking experience.
When accessibility is prioritized and thoughtfully implemented, it fosters a seamless experience for all users. Conversely, neglecting these considerations can lead to user frustration, decreased engagement, and negative reviews, ultimately harming the institution’s credibility and reputation in the market.
Following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the ADA is critical for ensuring that digital platforms are usable for individuals with varying disabilities.
Visual Elements
Your digital banking solution should incorporate high-contrast colors and easily readable fonts to enhance accessibility. This approach is especially beneficial for users with visual impairments, including those with color blindness (daltonism) or age-related vision challenges. Additionally, it’s important to be mindful of using flashing images, as they can pose significant risks for users with epilepsy and other seizure disorders. For example, Tyfone refrains from incorporating flashing images anywhere in our banking solution.
Navigation
Focus on delivering intuitive navigation by implementing clear headings, logical flows to help users easily find their way. Keyboard navigation should also be seamless, enabling users who cannot use a mouse to use your services.
Testing
If you’re developing an in-house digital banking solution, it’s essential to gather feedback from users with disabilities to ensure your platform is user-friendly and accessible. By prioritizing their experiences, you can make improvements that genuinely meet their needs, ultimately enhancing their banking experience and making their lives easier.
2. Offer Multiple Ways To Interact With Your Platform
Recognizing that your users have diverse preferences for interacting with your digital banking solution is key to ensuring long-term satisfaction.
By offering multiple avenues for engagement, your financial institution can deliver a platform that caters to a broader audience.
This inclusive approach fosters a positive experience for your users, ensuring that the majority of your account holders feel valued and supported by your digital banking platform.
Screen Reader Compatibility
You should optimize your solution for screen readers, enabling visually impaired users to navigate easily. This means including descriptive alt text for images and accessible forms.
Text-To-Speech Options
This type of option helps users with learning disabilities or those who can benefit from spoken information. By doing so, your financial institution can create a more engaging and supportive user experience.
3. Streamline Your Content And User Journey
A user-friendly interface is important for all users, but ever more so for individuals with cognitive disabilities or those who may have a hard time understanding complex navigation.
Many users face challenges when a banking platform has complicated layouts, many clicks to complete a task, overpopulated pages or too many options to choose from.
This can lead to frustrations and a desire to find a financial institution that offers a more simple digital experience.
By simplifying the user’s journey, financial institutions can greatly enhance the overall experience of their digital banking solution and lead to customer or member retention.
Concise Menus
Simple, well-organized menus guide users organically and logically through their financial journey. Try to group related items together wherever you can to make the experience easier to understand. For example, you can tie all features related to credit cards and debit cards under one tab named “Card Management”.
Streamlined Flows
No user wants to spend hours to pay a couple of bills. Your financial institution should focus on minimizing the steps needed to perform a certain task. Also be aware that not all users are technologically savvy, so make sure to guide them with clear instructions until they are familiar with your platform.
Simple Language
Try to adopt familiar and clear language when explaining financial services or products in your solution, without going overboard with technical jargon and buzzwords that will only end up confusing your users and potentially costing you revenue.
FREE PAMPHLET
Unlocking Inclusive Banking Through Accessibility
Explore our pamphlet to see how Tyfone supports disabled account holders by delivering a modern, user-friendly experience. Discover our commitment to building an inclusive and accessible digital banking platform that empowers everyone to manage their finances with ease. Learn more about the impact of providing accessible digital banking to disabled account holders and the reasons why inclusion is so important in today’s society.
4. Provide Configurable Alerts And Notifications
Configurable alerts and notifications are vital for financial institutions, as they allow for tailored delivery of important updates to disabled users based on their specific needs.
This flexibility helps create a more inclusive environment, empowering users with diverse abilities and enhancing both independence and accessibility.
Customizable Time Limits For Sessions Timeout
This allows financial institutions to adjust the duration before the session expires for users, offering assistance to those who may need the extra time due to accessibility challenges. For users with disabilities, this reduces the frustration of having to deal with digital banking sessions that expire too rapidly and gives them more control over sensitive tasks.
Countdown Warning Before Time-Out
Giving a countdown warning before an inactive session expiration ensures that users are aware of their current status. This feature is especially useful for users that may have issues interacting with the platform due to disabilities, giving them the chance to extend the session without losing progress or having to re-enter information.
Alerts That Do Not Automatically Disappear
Alerts that stay on the screen until dismissed are useful for all users, especially those with visual or cognitive impairments. This ensures that users can stay informed without missing critical updates, enhancing the overall user experience and accessibility.
5. Prioritize Inclusive Customer Support
Even a well-organized and thoughtfully designed digital banking platform may still present challenges for some users, particularly those with disabilities.
That’s why it’s essential for financial institutions to offer responsive and well-trained user support capable of addressing the diverse needs of all account holders.. Ensuring that users receive appropriate assistance not only enhances the overall experience but also fosters a sense of loyalty and trust, helping to strengthen the institution’s relationship with its account holders.
Different Support Channels
Your financial institution should focus on providing multiple types of support channels, such as phone assistance, emails, video calls, co-browsing and ticketing systems. This diversity of options ensures that all of your account holders feel valued and supported, enhancing their overall banking journey.
Prepared Staff
You should prepare your staff to not only answer queries from your account holders, but also engage with disabled users in an empathetic manner. By creating a sensitive and understanding environment, your users will feel comfortable and valued within your institution. This type of approach helps your users feel more comfortable with using your services and leading to a lasting relationship with your institution.
Provide Ways To Leave Feedback
Your financial institution should strive to empower users by providing an easy way to report accessibility issues or suggest improvements. Actively encouraging feedback from disabled users will help you identify areas that need improvements, ensuring a more user-friendly digital experience.
Are You Providing An Inclusive Banking Experience?
Whether partnering with a vendor for a digital banking solution or developing it in-house, accessibility and inclusion should be integral to your vision.
Creating an inclusive digital banking experience goes beyond compliance with ADA and WCAG standards, it’s about providing meaningful value to all account holders.
By implementing these five tips, financial institutions can enhance their digital banking experience, fostering stronger loyalty, increasing user engagement, and encouraging users to explore additional services offered by the institution.
