An accessibility programme, not a project
Banque Misr is government-owned and among the largest banks in Egypt and Africa. It had already decided that its digital services should work for people of determination, and said so publicly: a cooperation protocol signed in January 2023, through Cisco, committed the bank to matching its internet and mobile banking to those customers’ needs.
What it did not have was the in-house skill or capacity to put a plan behind that commitment. That is what the programme was for — and why it was a programme rather than a round of fixes. Across 2023 and 2024 it reached the banking platforms themselves, the policy and development practice behind them, and the people who would have to keep both right after we left.
Three strands
Assessment
Manual audits across the bank’s digital products, and audit plans setting out how they would be re-checked: a roadmap, not a one-off verdict.
Policy and practice
A bank-wide policy naming commitments and responsibilities, with accessibility written into the software development lifecycle rather than bolted to the end of it.
Capability
Training for the Digital Factory’s developers, designers and quality assurance engineers, so accessibility became part of how each already worked.
The third strand is the one that decides whether the first two last. An audit finds what is wrong today; a policy states what must be true; only a team that knows why keeps it true in the release after this one.
What the programme achieved
- 60%of digital products and services now meet WCAG 2.1.
- 60%of the bank’s teams trained in digital accessibility.
- 40%fewer accessibility issues reported by customers.
The third figure is the one worth pausing on. Conformance is measured against a standard; the third is measured by customers, and a fall in what they report is the programme showing up in someone’s day.
It did not end there. The bank committed to continuing audits and training, and the collaboration has carried on past the programme that started it.
The client experience
Their expertise and guidance have been invaluable in our journey towards inclusivity. We look forward to continuing our collaboration and providing equal opportunities for all our customers.
Why banking is a hard case
A bank is not one product. It is a website, a mobile application on two platforms, statements and contracts as documents, and an authentication step in front of all of it. A customer who cannot complete one of those cannot bank, however accessible the others are.
That is why the assessment covered the platforms together rather than one at a time, and why the policy work reached procurement and development rather than stopping at a remediation list. Screen reader support and text resizing were named in the bank’s own announcement; they are the visible end of work that has to reach the structure underneath.
Public coverage
The collaboration was announced publicly by the bank.
The expertise behind the engagement
The programme drew on the disciplines behind our accessibility audit, policy review and development, accessibility training and strategy and governance services, delivered as one programme rather than four engagements.
It ran in Arabic and English throughout, which for a bank is not a translation question: an account statement, an error message and a confirmation screen each have to work in both, and Arabic A11y is what makes that a specialism rather than an afterthought.
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