We’ve become the first building society to offer access to British Sign Language translation on our website.

Managing your finances can be tricky at the best of times. Imagine trying to navigate this if English isn’t your first language. That is what many of our Deaf customers have to do every day.

What is the problem statement and opportunity that we faced into?

In the UK over 150,000 use British Sign language (BSL) to communicate, with 87,000 using it as their first or preferred language. BSL is a distinct language with its own vocabulary and sentence structure; English is not often a second or even third language for BSL users. This can mean communications written in English are often hard to understand, if not impossible.

There is an ever-increasing reliance on digital solutions to manage our day to day lives which requires reading English. Think about what this might be like for people who have BSL as their first language and who find written English hard to understand. From trying to shop online to using a search engine… even reading this article!! Now picture how this would impact managing your finances ……

Banking web pages are full of text and if you struggle to read written English, they can be hard to interpret. This often leads to BSL users relying on friends and families to translate and removes independence when managing their money.

Our website is available 24/7 and holds all the key information customers need to either find the right product for them or get support with a product they already hold with Nationwide. We’re determined to ensure that our services are as inclusive as they possibly can be — we don’t believe that it’s fair or right for a customer not to be able to get support with their finances because they have a disability. It is key that our webpages are accessible to all, including BSL users, as such we identified a gap.

This led to us working with Signly to implement their solution which translates web content into BSL. Once Signly is turned on, a pre-recorded video appears on the screen providing a translation of the text. Signly’s innovative technology continually monitors the website content to ensure translations remain accurate even if the content on the page changes.

We launched with our most popular pages translated to see how BSL users would use our site and to gather insight on the tools use. We’ll be adding more content as we go, and users can select any new pages they want to see translated.

How did we do it?

We were aware of the Signly solution, so we started discussions with them to see how we might implement it. Signly already partner with a number of organisations, so we could see the service in action and how it might benefit customers. We also discussed it with people with lived experience and deaf charities to gain an understanding of how this service would help them.

Once we agreed it was the right solution, we began testing to see how it would work on our website. We then had to follow all the usual onboarding activities such as testing the security of the solution, agreeing contracts and designing the customer experience.

Were there any challenges?

As with all third-party integrations, it wasn’t all plain sailing to deliver. We faced a number of technical issues due to the way our website works but the willingness and collaboration on both sides meant we were able to overcome this. We also had a number of internal hurdles such as where the Signly pop-up box should appear without impacting the usability of the website and how to make the customer journey to switching the service on as simple as possible.

What have we learned?

We have learnt the importance of meeting the needs of our customers even when the world isn’t set up to fully support those needs. It was key for Nationwide to be the first building society to launch this service to show the Deaf community that we want to understand the barriers they face and to help to break these down.

We have also learnt that when all stakeholders have a common goal and purpose nothing is insurmountable. A great many people worked on this solution from both Nationwide and Signly; teamwork and strong communication were essential, especially when a new issue or problem came to the table.

What have we done and what’s next?

With money impacting all aspects of life, ensuring that people are not prevented from banking independently due to a lack of accessibility, is critical. A recent report1 by self-regulatory banking body, the Lending Standards Board (LSB), found that whilst 65% of their registered firms offered BSL services in-branch, and 59% offered remote BSL access via video, only 6% provided on-demand access to website content.

This launch coincided with the start of Sign Language Week, where national charity British Deaf Association (BDA) is ramping up calls for greater acknowledgement of the needs of Deaf people.

In addition to Signly, Nationwide already offers a number of other services for our deaf or hard of hearing customers:

· Relay UK — which offers confidential text-to-speech and speech-to-text services for people who struggle to use the phone.

· SignVideo, in which the customer can use BSL interpreted calls with a qualified and registered interpreter.

· Interpreters for face-to-face meetings.

We chair a monthly, pan industry working group, where we discuss and share knowledge, gaps, solutions, and best practice. We also held a launch event in 2023 for the LSB report into ‘access for d/Deaf customers in banking & credit’. This report led to us developing a strategy to identify and address gaps for Deaf customers. We have a live action plan of which Signly was one of the deliverables. Further activity to implement solutions is underway with delivery due over the coming weeks and months, so watch this space ….