Bahrain Association of Banks (BAB) has announced plans to launch a unified dictionary for banking terminologies in sign language, to help the deaf and dumb to deal with banks and make transactions easily.

The BAB move comes following the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) proposal to the Bahraini association for finding the best solutions and practices that enable deaf and dumb to make banking transactions easily, as a prelude to adapt these practices by the various banks in the kingdom.

“Based on this, we did a comprehensive research on the related cases locally, regionally and internationally, and we found a system made by a Saudi company that might be the most convenient”, stated its CEO Dr Waheed Al Qassim at a key meeting.

The BAB meeting was attended by representatives of CBB, e.government, local banks and the Saudi company where they discussed how to localize the Saudi application in the kingdom’s Banks, testing and evaluating it until it is applied by various banks in the region, where the initiative credit will go to the the financial sector in Bahrain.

BAB chief said the next phase will consist of training bankers on the terminologies in sign language, as well as teaching deaf and dumb the essential banking transactions they might need.

Dr Al Qassim lauded CBB for its initiative to enhance and reach out to even its special needs customers and provide them key bank services.

He said CBB has issued a circular to all the retail banks that has 10 branches or more in the kingdom to equip at least one branch  to serve the special needs customers in line with providing the regular banking services.

The circular also encourages banks to provide one ATM machine at least to service the special needs customers, he added.-TradeArabia News Service