As a visually impaired person, you may find it difficult to withdraw money from a cash machine because of a lot of them being touchscreen and of course security reasons. However, most major banks now provide cash machines that include a talking feature on them. Don’t worry, the talking feature on them will not shout your name, pin and bank balance out to everyone nearby, instead you connect headphones to the machine and the talking will instantly start as soon as the headphones are detected.
You will need to bring your own headphones with you to these machines, but they use the standard 3.5ml headphone jack that is found on most devices, so any headphones that you get with an iPod or similar device will work.
There is a fantastic website and iPhone app that you can use to help you find your nearest talking cash machine. Please find the links below.
To locate your nearest talking cash machine using the website:
- Enter your postcode in the “search” field, or use the “Search around your location” button for the website to automatically detect your location.
- Find the “Search Filters” link, which should be just next to the “Search” button and click it.
- Now, a number of checkboxes should have appeared. Check the “Audio assistance” box along with any other filters you would like to apply. If you’re simply looking for a talking machine, leave the rest of the boxes unchecked. Find the “Apply changes” button and click it. If the button reads as “Dimmed” or “disabled” by your screen reader, just click the close button. You will know the change has worked if the filters link now reads the number of filters you have applied.
Now, click the search button. Once the page has refreshed, scroll down until you find a list of nearby ATMs. You should hear the street where the ATM is located, its postcode and how many miles it is away from you.
Click here to go to the ATM locator website
Unfortunately, using the iPhone app is not very accessible. VoiceOver users can currently search for ATMs by location, however it is not possible to apply filters while using VoiceOver, therefore it is not clear which ones provide audio assistance. We will update this page if this changes.