BACKGROUND ON DISABILITY ACTION PLAN

The Australian Banking Industry is committing itself to playing its part in eliminating the digital divide that makes accessing electronic services difficult for older people and people with disabilities. As technology reshapes the financial services industry, it is critical all people have access to electronic networks such as EFTPOS, ATMs, Telephone, Internet banking and Smart Cards across the industry.

The Australian Bankers' Association, on behalf of its member banks, will lodge in April an Industry Disability Action Plan with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) in an important step towards addressing access concerns for older people and people with disabilities.

The Disability Action Plan will commit the industry to developing industry-wide best practice standard and protocols for voluntary adoption by the banks. Banks will then use these standards to upgrade their products, services and facilities to world-best standard accessibility.

Key areas the plan will address are overcoming access barriers to:

• ATMs
• EFTPOS
• Telephone
• Internet Banking
• Smart cards

Instrumental in helping develop the plan was the Accessibility E commerce Forum, an initiative of the HREOC and the ABA, which includes representatives from a range of industry, Government and community groups. The role of the Forum is to identify partnerships and strategies to address the recommendations in the HREOC report (June 1999): "Accessibility of Electronic Commerce and New Service and Information Technologies for Older Australians and People with a Disability." The report identified an emerging digital divide between those people who could utilise new technologies to improve their lives and those who could not. The report made a series of recommendations to begin the process of eliminating the Digital Divide by dismantling E-commerce access barriers.

The main driver of the Industry Action Plan is the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) which requires all businesses to provide facilities that can be accessed by people with disabilities. The DDA means that there is no need or case for the industry itself to self-regulate for the adoption of the Standards and Protocols. It will be up to individual banks to make their own assessments as to whether they are meeting the requirements of the DDA and use the Standards and Protocols to assist in this task.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that 3.2 million Australians, or 18% of the population have some type of disability. 14% of the Australian population have a handicap resulting from their disability. Approximately 50% of the Australian population over 60 years have a disability.

For Further Information Contact:

Heather Wellard

ABA PR

Phone: 02 8298 0411

Mobile: 0409 830 439

ENDS