All audible information is delivered privately through a standard headphone jack on the face of the machine or a separately attached telephone handset.
The talking ATM was a result of concerns Chris and Marie Stark, two blind customers, raised with the bank beginning in 1984.
The Talking ATM function is specifically designed for visually impaired or partially sighted customers of Yapi Kredi or other banks.
Utilising the text-to-speech technology, customers can perform cash withdrawal or balance inquiry transactions via Talking ATMs.
[8][9][10][11] In 2011 the UK's leading charity for blind and partially sighted people, RNIB, launched a campaign to get major banks to install talking cash machines.
However, a few weeks before the Games, sponsor and sole provider Visa announced that they would only be able to install the necessary software in time on two machines.
[13] Following consultation and collaboration with the RNIB, during 2013, Nationwide Building Society, the world’s largest mutual organisation, started introducing voice guided transactions across their network of 1,300 ATMs.
[15] On June 25, 1999, Wells Fargo became the first major bank in the United States to commit to installing talking ATMs.
The Citibank machine represented a unique engineering and research challenge as it uses a touch screen interface and has no function keys to offer access to the blind.
The bank has also developed Talking ATM usage accessible manuals in DAISY and electronic Braille formats.