Banking services inaccessible to people with disabilities
Establishing full guardianship for people with disabilities deprives them of access to justice and the right to independent life.
As noted in the alternative report of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights on progress in the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, published on the UN official website, the state does not fulfill its commitments to support people with disabilities in exercising their legal capacity.
This, first and foremost, refers to the adult people with mental disorders as the effective defense mechanism involves adjudging them as incompetent and establishing a full guardianship over them in a judicial proceeding. In this case, the guardian makes all the decisions and legal action, limiting the people’s rights to equality and non-discrimination, access to justice, independent life, involvement in the community, right to family life, right to vote, and so on.
People with disabilities usually do not have equal access to bank loans, mortgages and other forms of financial crediting. They are often refused a loan, as the banks say they are insolvent.
Most of the bank office premises are architecturally inaccessible for wheelchair users. Meanwhile, the ATMs are located too high or a client with disabilities should go upstairs to reach it, being unable to do that without someone’s help.
The information on the ATM display can’t be seen by visually impaired people, and most of the bank websites, through which one can perform bank card transactions, are also inaccessible. Another problem for visually impaired people is to reproduce their private signature several times, so the banks deny them service because of that.
As highlighted in the Commissioner’s report, the people with hearing impairments experience problems while communicating with the bank employees without the assistance of an interpreter, so such people are not always aware of the contents of contracts they sign with the bank.
As a reminder, the report is based on the results of the monitoring activity of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights in cooperation with the human rights organizations over the past three years.
