Blind-friendly ballot papers for elections

20 July 2016 - 19:02 By Nomahlubi Jordaan

Blind and visually-impaired voters will be able to cast their votes in the upcoming local elections without any help‚ thanks to specially-designed new ballot papers.The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC)‚ Blind SA and the South African National Council for the Blind (SANCB) announced the new 32-window cardboard ballot template on Wednesday. IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela said an even bigger double-column 40-window cardboard UBT would be used in the Cape Town metro where 36 parties are contesting the elections. "The Cape Town ballot paper will be the largest yet seen in a South African election and about A3 in size (420mm X 384mm) – approximately twice the size of a traditional ballot paper." According to the IEC‚ the new templates work the same way as the plastic Universal Ballot Template (UBT). They have windows numbered in Braille and with numbers in large white font so that people with different tactile‚ literacy and sight levels can use the same template. No ballot box selfies‚ warns IEC"Both the ballot papers and the templates have a tactile recognition feature to assist visually-impaired voters with the correct alignment of the ballot paper in the template. Ballot papers have a circular hole punched in the bottom left corner. All the templates have a built-in tactile feature on the top right-hand corner."All voting stations in the 2016 Municipal Elections will be supplied with a UBT and election officials have been trained to assist visually-impaired voters to mark their ballots unaided with the use of a UBT and to cast their vote‚" Bapela said.Voter education on using the UBT has begun nationwide with the assistance of organisations representing visually-impaired persons‚ including Blind SA and SANCB‚ the IEC said."The Electoral Commission has always been sensitive to the needs of voters who are visually-impaired. The fact that we need to constantly expand the size of the template to accommodate larger ballot papers is an indication of the strong growth of multi-party democracy in our country‚" said Dr Nomsa Masuku‚ Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for Outreach at the IEC...

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