Breaking Barriers: AI-Driven Financial Accessibility for the Blind and Mobility-Impaired

Title

Breaking Barriers: AI-Driven Financial Accessibility for the Blind and Mobility-Impaired

Author

1. Denis Brunetti, Postdoctoral Researcher, Souphanouvong University, Laos

Abstract

Financial accessibility is a fundamental prerequisite for social inclusion, independence, and economic participation. Yet, millions of individuals with disabilities—particularly those who are blind or have limited mobility—face significant challenges in accessing everyday banking services. Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), despite being critical touchpoints for financial independence, continue to present usability barriers rooted in their reliance on vision, fine motor skills, and inaccessible interface designs.

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), especially in the form of agentic, multimodal systems, offers transformative opportunities to dismantle these barriers. By combining speech technologies, computer vision, natural language understanding, haptic feedback, and secure edge-cloud hybrid architectures, AI systems can reimagine ATMs and public kiosks as universally accessible.

This paper provides a comprehensive exploration of how AI-driven solutions can enable financial accessibility for blind and mobility-impaired populations. It reviews the current state of accessibility in banking, highlights technological breakthroughs in AI for assistive interaction, presents a synthesized framework for agentic AI-powered inclusive ATMs, and analyzes both the benefits and challenges of such approaches. The discussion further explores deployment strategies, ethical considerations, and a roadmap toward nationwide, inclusive financial ecosystems. The findings suggest that with careful design, AI has the potential to transform financial infrastructure into a universally accessible system, thus breaking persistent social and technological barriers.

Keywords

Conclusion

Financial inclusion cannot be achieved without addressing the persistent accessibility barriers faced by blind and mobility-impaired individuals. ATMs and kiosks, as central nodes of financial infrastructure, must evolve from exclusionary designs to universally accessible systems.

Artificial intelligence—especially in its agentic, multimodal form—provides a unique opportunity to achieve this transformation. By integrating speech, vision, haptics, personalization, and secure architectures, AI-powered systems can enable independent, dignified, and secure financial interactions.

The transition requires careful attention to challenges of security, bias, regulation, and user trust. However, with collaborative efforts between banks, technology developers, policymakers, and disability advocacy groups, AI-driven accessibility can become the new standard.

Breaking barriers in financial accessibility is not only a technological imperative but also a moral and societal responsibility. With the right vision and commitment, agentic AI can redefine inclusive banking for the twenty-first century and beyond.

Author Contrubution

The author was solely responsible for the study's conception, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and manuscript preparation.

Funding

The authors did not receive financial support from any public, commercial, or non-profit funding agencies for this research.

Conflict of Interest

All authors state that there are no conflicts of interest.

Data Sharing Statement

Not applicable.

Software And Tools Use

Not applicable.

Acknowledgements

I am thankful for the help and expertise of all contributors to this study and manuscript, as well as the insightful feedback from anonymous reviewers.