Talking ATM Locater in India

Know what a Talking ATM is? You know but a recap: facilitating independent transaction to the visually impaired – the Talking ATM has raised buttons, gives voice guidance via headphone and for secrecy and security reasons lets the blind to turn off the screen. Read a detailed article here.

Talking ATM is an excellent piece of accessibility, but often people with visual disabilities remain unaware about it even if it stands near them. Therefore, the necessity of a tool to check the availability of Talking ATMs was felt – prompting the trio of Sameer Thakur, Prashant Naik and Saidarshan Bhagat to launch the first Indian Talking ATM Locator in the form of TalkingATMIndia.org.

This Talking ATM Locator was inaugurated by Harish Kotian – the Assistant General Manager of Reserve Bank of India (Mumbai) at the Access India convention organized in Delhi on Feb. 14, 2014.

This locator is compatible with computer screen readers. All the main mobile-based screen readers, too, support this locator – making it easy for the visually impaired users to search an accessible ATM on the go, in an unfamiliar region.

“With Google Maps,” says Sunil Sangtani, Director, Chandra International, Jaipur, “we are able to search ATMs, not Talking ATMs. But this locator has proved very useful to getting to the nearest Talking ATM in whatever area we wish.”

Anshu Goyal, Single Window Operator at Punjab National Bank, Hisar, says, “After using this locator first time I came to know about the Talking ATMs in my city. I am happy that my city has one accessible ATM.”

Currently Union Bank of India, State Bank of India and Bank of Baroda have made the list of their Talking ATMs available, other banks have to follow suit.

Steps to use Talking ATM Locator:

1. A combo box will appear asking you to select the desired state
2. Mark radio button search by PIN (Alt + P) or radio button search by Area (Alt + R)
3. Type the selected text (PIN or Area)
4. Tap the search button (Alt + S) to bring up the table of results

The website offers easy access, content is simple and precise, and above all, the Talking ATM Locator is quick and easy to use. A good effort by the trio – showing a signpost towards the nearest Talking ATM.

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Written with the help of Shadab Husain of PersonalityAndEnglish.blogspot.in.