Banks have been asked to equip their ATMs with voice guidance and Braille keyboards for the convenience of persons with disabilities, Deputy Minister of Economic Development Nishantha Jayaweera told Parliament on Wednesday, the Daily Mirror reported.
The Daily Mirror renders the deputy minister’s name as U.D.N. Jayaweera; prior coverage on this site uses the fuller form, Nishantha Jayaweera.
A second accessibility measure in two days
The announcement is the second measure of its kind reported this week.
Sri Lanka Police open a WhatsApp video route into the 119 emergency line for deaf and hard-of-hearing callers on 10 September — a service to be answered by an officer with sign-language training. That measure addresses a voice-only emergency line; this one addresses a screen-and-keypad banking interface. Both target the same gap from opposite ends: services designed around a single sense.
It extends the push to a sector the government had not named
In August, ahead of Sri Lanka’s first review under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Geneva, Minister Upali Pannilage set out where the accessibility work was concentrated. He named line ministries responsible for education, transport, housing and water supply as those working together on accessibility and services for persons with disabilities, alongside a Cabinet-approved Sign Language Bill and proposed amendments to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act.
Banking was not on that list. Wednesday’s statement extends the programme into financial services, and does so through a request to commercial banks rather than through the line ministries named in Geneva.
What “asked” leaves open
The Daily Mirror’s report is a single sentence from a parliamentary sitting, and the operative word in it is asked.
It is not reported whether the request carries a Central Bank direction behind it, whether it applies to new ATM installations or to the existing network, or whether any deadline or compliance mechanism attaches to it. A request to banks is not the same instrument as a regulatory determination, and nothing in the report indicates which of the two this is.
Voice guidance on an ATM also depends on a headphone jack or equivalent audio output for the transaction to remain private — a requirement the report does not mention.
Not reported
The report does not say which ministry issued the request, what question the deputy minister was answering or who asked it, how many ATMs are in service nationally, how many already carry either feature, what the cost would be or who bears it, or whether the Central Bank of Sri Lanka or the Bankers’ Association has responded.
Sourcing note
The Daily Mirror is the only verified newsroom to have filed on this statement. NewsFirst’s and Hiru’s latest listings carried nothing on it, Ada Derana returned a CloudFront 403 domain-wide throughout this cycle, and a search across the verified outlets returned no matching report. The article is filed by the Daily Mirror’s parliamentary reporting pair, Yohan Perera and Ajith Siriwardana.
