RE: accessible banking:

Hi David,

Here in the UK, I have internet banking accounts with the following banks:
Lloyds TSB, Nationwide, Smile, Abbey, Woolwich and Barclays

(As someone with an interest in web application design, I never close any
accounts I no longer use, but keep them open for research purposes.)

Admittedly, I've only ever used any of them with IE on Windows.

The UK bank that has made the biggest strides towards accessibility is
Nationwide. This is to be expected, as it was done under the auspices of Ian
Lloyd, a member of WaSP and founder of Accessify.com. He has spoken widely
about his work at Nationwide:
http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article917.asp
http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2003/08/27/standards_de/

Compared with the banks I list above, I found Nationwide's online banking by
far the best designed, although it still lacks many obvious accessibility
improvements. I have just successfully logged on using Firefox, without any
alerts or warnings. Everything seems to function properly. Their demo is a
proper sandbox account, so you can go and test it for yourself with the
browser of your choice:
http://www.nationwide.co.uk/Demos/InternetBankingDemo/default.htm

I also logged on to Woolwich using Firefox. It doesn't give any warnings,
but doesn't appear to function properly. (The online banking app is built in
entirely in JavaScript, though, so I don't expect great accessibility.)
Their browser recommendations are for IE only, they make no guarantees for
other browsers.

I don't have logins for the other banks handy here at work; if anyone's
curious let me know and I can test whether they support Firefox.

Hope that helps.

francois

Wheel Group, Beaumont House, Kensington Village, Avonmore Road, London W14
8TS
 
T +44 (0)20 7348 1000    F +44 (0)20 7348 1111
D +44 (0)20 7348 1049
francois.jordaan@wheel.co.uk
www.wheel.co.uk
 


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