Loan Zone: Documents for people with vision loss

Central to the mission of every credit union is that it exists to serve its members. While numerous factors go into delivering the level of service that members count on, a fundamental consideration is the need to provide members with documents in a format they can read.

Statistics show there are approximately 21 million people in the U.S. with vision loss, including an aging Baby Boomer generation and a large number of people with cognitive disabilities. For those who are blind or partially sighted, reading and understanding personal and confidential documents can be difficult or even impossible without the help of a sighted person or an assistive device. However, while 15 to 20 percent of the population needs access to accessible websites and documents, only 3 to 4 percent of documents are actually made accessible. One reason for this discrepancy is that many organizations, including credit unions, wait for a customer request before they will take the steps needed to convert a document to an accessible format.

For a CU dedicated to serving its members, taking an “upon request” approach is problematic and can cause great inconvenience to members with vision loss. In particular, formatting financial documents for accessibility can be more complex than many other kinds of documents because they often contain detailed tables, graphs and personalized customer data. For example, we know of instances in which a consumer with vision loss received a printed bill in the mail and called to request it be re-sent to them in an accessible format, only to receive the accessible documents after additional billing cycles had passed. No one involved in the transaction benefitted from this approach, neither the organization to be paid nor the inconvenienced consumer. Before doing business with financial organizations, many consumers with vision loss or blindness have learned to vet them to make sure they provide accessible documents.

 

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