THE chair of trustees of a national sight loss charity is calling for this to be the last election that blind people can’t vote in secret.
Winchester woman and RNIB chair of trustees Anna Tylor wants access to be improved.
RNIB’s Turned Out report found that just over one in 10 blind people felt they could vote independently and in secret in the 2019 General Election.
Anna said: “It’s been over 150 years since people have had the right to vote in secret, but this right still isn’t afforded to many of the 2m blind and partially sighted people like me who face significant barriers to voting independently.
“All polling stations are required to have a tactile voting device and large print copy of the ballot paper for reference, but voting remains a fundamentally visual exercise. Solutions with audio elements, or combining audio and tactile, do exist but are not widely available with people with sight loss having to proactively request these from local electoral officials, who will then consider if they can obtain them or not.
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“We’ve heard from blind and partially sighted people that they have often had to make their choices out loud, robbing them of their secret vote, leading to discomfort and uncertainty about whether their vote was cast as intended. Some have opted out of voting altogether due to these issues with 42 per cent of blind respondents to our Turned Out survey following the 2019 General Election were dissatisfied with their experience of voting.”
She added: “As we go into another election, RNIB has contacted electoral officials asking whether they can provide audio devices to blind voters. Electoral officials have confirmed they will not be widely available, which will mean yet again voters having to share their vote. We are urging the next government to change this - make voting accessible so blind and partially sighted people, like me, can finally cast our vote independently and in secret.”
RNIB has campaigned hard in recent years for accessible voting solutions to be proactively identified by both government and the Electoral Commission. RNIB has helped test devices which offer ways for blind and partially sighted people to vote independently.
Although audio devices, and combined audio and tactile devices, are mentioned in guidance as possible equipment, they are not part of the minimum standard and are only provided upon request. Many blind and partially sighted people are unaware of these provisions or what adaptations to request, and the short notice of a General Election has made it harder for electoral officials to provide for individual requests in time. The minimum standard of equipment in polling stations, which will be available to most blind voters, has largely remained the same as in 2019, when a judge called provisions “a parody of the electoral process”.
RNIB’s February 2022 YouGov survey of 1,800 people aged over 18 found that 15 per cent of people said they wouldn’t vote if they could only vote by telling someone else who they want to vote for.
From RNIB’s own analysis, if this was applied to all adults in the UK, there would have been more than 4.8m fewer votes cast in the 2019 General Election.
For more details about the campaign, visit rnib.org.uk.
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