a2i's Disability Innovation Lab — Disability-Led Advocacy Forces Accessible Bank Design in Bangladesh

Bangladesh's Aspire to Innovate (a2i) Programme, run by the ICT Division under the Prime Minister's Office, set up a Disability Innovation Lab (DIL) with a panel of accessibility auditors who are themselves blind, deaf or physically disabled, to make the country's digital transformation accessible.

To translate individual disability-discrimination cases into systemic change in accessible service design across government and the financial sector.

After blind a2i consultant Vashkar Bhattacharjee was refused a standard credit card and instead offered one in his wife's name, he took the case to Bangladesh's National Human Rights Commission, which held a hearing on 17 January 2022. a2i used the resulting ruling as leverage to audit five major banks (Sonali, Islami, City, Standard Chartered, Eastern) and briefed their executives on accessible service design on 2 March 2022, feeding into the 'Digital Service and Web Designing Guideline for Inclusive Accessibility 2022'.

The bank issued Bhattacharjee's card within a week of the NHRC hearing. Five major banks were audited and briefed on accessible design. A 2025 joint UNDP Bangladesh/a2i study found that only 4% of persons with disabilities use mobile internet, against 27% of people without disabilities.

The link between the DIL's advocacy and the resulting guideline comes from a2i and ESCAP's own project reporting rather than an independent evaluation, and the 2025 usage gap shows guidelines and audits have not yet translated into equal digital access.