Alternatif Bank “Accessible Banking Term Dictionary” Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2024

We focus on Accessible Banking initiatives to create a rights-based and accessible banking experience for everyone. We advocate that all services offered should be equally and easily accessible by everyone. With the ultimate aim of making a rights-based perspective on disability standard in the Turkish banking sector, we have been carrying out Accessible Banking activities for approximately 5 years. As Alternatif Bank, we believe that financial services should be accessible and equally provided to everyone and that individuals' literacy and usage of economic services should be increased.

Today, there are different segments in society that have difficulty understanding banking terms, primarily including the hearing-impaired, elderly, and people with low financial literacy. If you cannot understand the service you receive, it is not very accessible. Based on this deficiency, we started a dictionary project to make the most frequently used banking terms more understandable for different disability groups, primarily the hearing-impaired. With the contributions of a valuable team consisting of sign language experts, academicians, and NGO representatives, we made the terms more understandable using sign language, audio descriptions, and simplified texts.

In the second phase of our project, which we carried out in 2023 with the support of the Development Facility of the European Fund for Southeast Europe (EFSE DF), we added 75 new terms to the dictionary, bringing the total number of terms to over 100.