For Patti Bliss, a senior vice president at Frost National Bank in San Antonio, providing services for the deaf is personal.
The mother of a 20 year-old deaf son is spearheading a new program — believed to be the first of its kind — at the $13 billion-asset unit of Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc. that uses Internet videoconferencing to make American Sign Language interpreters available to help bankers communicate with customers.
“Of course, I have a passion for improving communication for all deaf … to have access to go into a bank, be independent, educated, understood, and able to make decisions,” Ms. Bliss said. Her son “wants to be independent and doesn’t want to rely on someone else to help him.”
Frost is offering the videoconferencing at four of its San Antonio branches through a partnership unveiled last week with Deaf Link Inc., a San Antonio provider of Internet-based sign language interpreting services.
Hearing-impaired customers who enter one of the four branches will be directed to a private room where a banker, a translator, and the customer can communicate. The translators also are trained in privacy matters related to banking.
Typically, bankers communicate with hearing-impaired customers by calling in interpreters — who often are not immediately available — or by passing notes back and forth with the customers.
But Kay Chiodo, the chief executive officer and president of Deaf Link, said that many deaf people are taught to communicate in sign language and do not understand written English.
American Sign Language “is a visual language or conceptual language with no roots in English,” she said. For example, in English people may say “the water is running” or “the computer is running,” but American Sign Language uses different signs for the word “running” in those contexts. Also, an advertisement for a “low-interest mortgage” could be interpreted to mean banks have little interest in making mortgages.
English is “just not their language, so it makes it challenging,” Ms. Chiodo said.
Also, many deaf people do not receive any education in financial matters, she said. “We know if we take out a loan we are going to pay interest, and if we go into a bank that we can choose checking accounts. They don’t know they can choose. Many just stay with whatever the teller gave them.”
A spokeswoman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said it does not offer an American Sign Language version of its Money Smart financial literacy program, but it is looking at developing one. The regulator started offering a Braille version last year.
The National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders said it knew of no estimates for the number of people using American Sign Language, but Deaf Link said it is believed to be the fourth-most used language in the United States. Gallaudet University in Washington has estimated that 10% of the U.S. population is either deaf or hard of hearing.
Paul Olivier, a group executive vice president at Frost, said early response to the new program has been very positive.
“With this particular activity, we anticipate more of the deaf and hard of hearing community that need to use American Sign Language will seek us out,” he said. “It will make the experience of banking markedly different.”
Eventually, Frost plans to offer the program in all its regions. Cullen/Frost has offices in many of the state’s major markets, including San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley.
“This is a step in the right direction to improving access to the deaf and hard of hearing in the financial world,” Ms. Bliss said.
