Westpac Online Banking Not Ready

08 Apr 2021 - karit

I did a previous post looking at ANZ’s online experience and Stuff today had a news item about the dropping cheques got me thinking about the other banks, especially from what I have seen where ANZ has done nothing in the last 5ish months, yet have not change the date they are ending support for cheques on. This got me thinking about it again and thought I would have a look at Westpac’s online banking experience.

Setup

Like last time replicating the set up someone who I support who has Macular degeneration.

I have turned display scaling up, using a larger font, using browser zoom and putting it all on 42” screen.

Westpac

Westpac has a demo site where you can see the the online banking experience.

For a start when on the login page you can’t even see the login form without scrolling: Not a good user experience when go to the login page and can’t see how to login.

The modal dialogs pop up but have no vertical scroll, so there is no way to interact with them or read them:

Conclusion Banking

The banks need to actual test their sites to ensure they will actual work before they drop the support for cheques. The bank’s online system are not ready to for cheque users yet.

It is disappointing that banks are being ableist in this process and seem to be focus on keeping their shareholders happy at the expense of their more vulnerable customers.

Conclusion Generally

More generally if you are involved in the development (all roles: product owner, BA, Dev, Test, Architect, Design, etc) of web or mobile application and you are not spending time with non default:

• display scaling
• font size
• zoom
• and properly non default like 300%, 400%, etc or not using screen readers, etc, you are negligent (particular with lifeish critical systems like banking) and being ableist if the site isn’t usable when use non default ways of interacting with it.