The 12th National Disability Week took place between the 17 and 22 November. BNP Paribas’ Handicap Project Team took part in several of the week’s many events (the Agefiph chat session, the Adapt Recruitment Forum, the Hanploi Conference on Disability and Education). It also organised two types of events which were good examples of its Policy on Disability:

• Awareness workshops open to all members of staff.
• An Open Door Recruitment Day for the benefit of disabled people interested in a career in banking.

The awareness workshops had two aims: to facilitate a better awareness of disabilities, and to present powerful technologies that could help the company to integrate people with handicaps more successfully.

At a beginners’ workshop on French Sign Language, many staff members learned to communicate in signs and to appreciate this as a unique language in its own right.

As part of its efforts to assist the hard of hearing, the bank is one of 10 founding members of Tadeo, a translation platform designed to aid communication between the deaf and those with normal hearing in a professional setting.
Our partner Tadeo showed us how the tool approaches deafness not as a handicap, but as a linguistic problem. The platform enables communication in several forms: on the telephone, in one to one conversations, or in meetings. Thanks to this new tool, which is simple to use and does not impede the listener in any way, the daily lives of deaf people are being radically transformed. The exchange between the staff member and the interpreter takes place via a computer equipped with a webcam.
Currently being used on an experimental basis by a number of BNP Paribas employees, Tadeo will be introduced from the end of 2009.

With respect to visual impairment, the Disability Project asked the Paul Guinot Association to provide a Journey of Discovery through the 5 senses, a journey which gave rise to some extraordinary perceptual experiences while participants were blindfolded.
Founded in 1918, the objective of the Paul Guinot Association is to train, educate and integrate the visually impaired, and to support efforts among other associations aimed at helping blind and visually impaired people to become full members of society.

On Open Door Day the bank opened its doors to people with disabilities. They met with members of the Disability Project, staff in charge of recruitment, and representatives of different types of activity and support functions. The CVs submitted to the bank are now being looked at.