In the late 1990's, the claimant parties--various vision-impaired customers of Citibank as well as the California Council of the Blind--sent a letter to Citibank in which they claimed that the bank had failed to adequately accommodate the needs of vision-impaired customers with respect to automatic teller machines (ATM). In response, Citibank informed the claimants that it wished to provide equal access for vision-impaired persons to ATM services, and the parties entered into structured negotiations.

At the conclusion of the negotiations, the parties entered into an agreement. The Citibank Preliminary Talking ATM agreement was the first agreement in the United States in which a bank agreed to install talking ATMs. Under the terms of the agreement, Citibank was to use its best efforts to initiate a six-month pilot test of the on-premises talking ATMs, making reports to the claimants every 60 days on progress.

On April 1, 2001, the parties entered into a second agreement. Under this second document, the bank agreed to install talking ATMs at all of its United States branch locations.

Kristen Sagar - 05/16/2009


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