The Foundation welcomes this inquiry into the 2005 General Election and believes that it provides an opportunity to ensure that blind and vision-impaired citizens enjoy the same degree of access, independence and privacy available to sighted voters. Current electoral practices make it difficult for people who cannot read print to exercise their right to vote in an equitable way. This will be a growing problem over the next two decades as baby boomers hit the age group within which vision problems often become manifest.

There are many more persons in New Zealand who are vision impaired than are members of the Foundation.[i] Improving the accessibility of general elections for Foundation members is likely to increase voter participation across society (e.g. among people with literacy problems or reading disabilities, or for whom English is a second language). Information that is tailored for one group often meets the needs of another.

There are four sections to this submission:

1) What makes it difficult for blind and vision-impaired people to vote in general elections?

2) Recommendations

2.1) That accessible electoral information be made readily available to the blind, vision-impaired, and deafblind

2.2) That voting by telephone be introduced for the 2008 General Election

2.3) That internet voting be introduced for the 2008 General Election

2.4) That braille voting be provided

2.5) That improvements in the quality of voting venues continue to be enhanced and audited.

3) Conclusion.

In addition to the information provided below, the Foundation requests the opportunity to speak to its submission.

1. What makes it difficult for blind and vision-impaired people to vote in general elections?

There are two primary areas of concern regarding the opportunity provided to blind and vision-impaired voters due to:

• Information accessibility
• Physical polling booth limitations.

Blind and vision-impaired voters can authorize a person to assist them with voting. However, this diminishes blind and vision-impaired people’s sense of independence.  In addition, blind and vision-impaired people continue to encounter barriers that hinder or even discourage their voting. Some of these barriers are acknowledged by the Chief Electoral Office in its Disability Action Plan.

Barriers include:

• Inadequate information on voting rights and electoral processes, and uneven or no access to candidate profile statements.
• Difficulties reading and completing voting papers independently and in secret.
• Inaccessible voting methods and places.

Information Accessibility

Blind and vision-impaired individuals have commented to the Foundation that they have difficulty accessing candidate profile statements. These may have been printed and distributed in small print, and were too long for most blind people to ask a family member or volunteer to read aloud or on to tape in full. Although much candidate information was available on the internet, the Foundation estimates that although internet use by blind and vision-impaired New Zealanders is increasing, fewer than 500 of its members would have been able to locate and use candidate information on the internet.

Information provided in the form of standard print and printed ballot papers cannot fully address the barriers to voting which exist for people who cannot read standard print. Blind people read through audio or braille, or via computers loaded with adaptive technology, e.g. braille or speech output.

Physical Polling Booth Limitations

A blind or vision-impaired individual may be fortunate in being assisted to fill in physical ballot papers by an appropriately trained Polling Clerk.  However, this is dependent on the quality of training provided to Clerks, some of whom violate privacy rights by speaking at a loud volume and due to the unavailability of discrete individual polling booths.  This approach, even if perfected, does not respect the autonomy of blind and vision-impaired individuals who have the skills and resources to complete their own ballot papers, were a range of voting options provided through available technologies such as on-line voting systems, telephone voting systems, brialle or a voice/audio system provided within polling stations.  Of these options telephone is the Foundations preferred voting delivery option.  Telephone voting is particularly suited to improving the turnout of blind voters because:

• Blind people are already competent users of the telephone
• Blind voters are almost certain to have a telephone in their homes and be able to use it
• Blind voters would be able to cast their vote independently and in secret.

2. Recommendations

The Foundation makes five recommendations to the Justice and Electoral Committee.

The Foundation recommends that accessible electoral information be made readily available to the blind, vision-impaired, and deafblind

In order to participate in elections, blind, vision-impaired, and other print disabled voters must be able to access independently the range of electoral information available to the community generally. The Foundation acknowledges that the Chief Electoral Office is developing strategies for communicating information to disabled voters.  Information required by voters includes details of voter entitlement and registration, electorate information and voting process, the candidate profile statements and any other brochures disseminated for the attention of voters.

All information needs to be available in a range of formats: audio, braille, large print, and electronic text. Large print versions must be designed so that the font is of adequate size, and not compromised by any background images; high gloss paper is unacceptable because of the way light shines on it and prevents readers from further magnifying the text. Web versions must conform to Government web accessibility standards and must offer any downloads in text or Word as well as PDF options.

The Foundation recommends that an XML publishing solution is developed for creating, storing, and providing election information to partner bodies. The use of Extensible Mark Up Language would assist the timely conversion of content into formats such as HTML for web sites, braille and synthetic speech files (the latter to be delivered via the Foundation’s Telephone Information Service).

The Foundation recommends that voting by telephone be introduced for the 2008 General Election

The Foundation recommends telephone voting as a preferred option for blind and vision-impaired voters. Telephone voting is already a method widely used by New Zealand shareholders to elect company representatives, and it has recently been tested in local authority elections in Britain. The Foundation itself has introduced secure, independent voting by telephone using its Telephone Information Service (TIS).  The Foundation would be willing to consider a partnership to explore further the options for TIS to be employed in general elections.  Additional information on telephone voting is included in Appendix 1.

The Foundations considers that it is feasible to make secure telephone voting available in time for the next General Election in 2008.

The Foundation recommends that internet voting be introduced for the 2008 General Election

Increasing numbers of blind New Zealanders have internet access. They access web information using adaptive technology that turns text into synthesized speech or braille.  The Foundation considers internet voting an important means of increasing voter access. Like voting by telephone, the internet would allow blind and vision-impaired New Zealanders to exercise their right to vote independently and in secret. However, socio-economic factors currently mean that far fewer blind people have access to internet capable computers than to the telephone. For this reason the Foundation prioritizes phone voting ahead of internet voting.

The Foundation believes that in the longer term electronic voting could become the standard for the majority of voters. Even within polling booths, there could be machines designed along the lines of talking automatic teller machines: the blind voter would plug headphones into the machine and listen to synthetic speech instructions in complete privacy.

The Foundation acknowledges and endorses the Chief Electoral Office’s signalled intention of trialling online voting in the 2008 general election, subject to Parliament’s approval. However, we would wish to see not just trialling at this time but a fully optioned system, such as was provided for the 2006 Census.

The Foundation recommends that braille voting be provided.

The third voting option which the Foundation endorses is voting by braille. Braille ballots have been successfully used as a means of voting for the Foundation’s Board of Directors. A special voting pack produced for braille readers allowed totally blind people to vote for the first time without needing help from a sighted person. While braille-card voting would not assist voters who cannot read braille, it would increase the degree of access, confidentiality and independence available to some blind and deafblind voters.

The Foundation recommends that improvements in the quality of voting venues continue to be enhanced and audited.

The Foundation wishes to acknowledge improvements made to the physical accessibility of polling booths in time for the 2005 General Election. 

Standards for the accessibility of voting places used in general elections should continue to be improved and attainment of agreed standards audited. Specifications should cover physical access (parking, access routes, entrances, internal routes), signs, lighting, furniture, and directional assistance from staff. Disability awareness training for general election staff responsible for managing voting and providing support to voters would be beneficial to voters and give staff confidence in their own ability to assist voters who are blind or vision impaired. Deafblind voters are likely to require particularly targeted assistance.

3. Conclusion

The Foundation considers that blind and vision-impaired individuals are denied reasonable independence in voting practice and that this effectively diminishes the voting rights experienced by blind and vision-impaired individuals.  The Foundation strongly recommends that steps be taken to improve the accessibility of voting for people with disabilities, particularly those whose vision impairment or blindness prevents them from reading standard print.  

The Foundation believes that the key obstacles can be reduced by utilising widely available systems to improve information that is not currently accessible.  Similarly, secure methods exist which could be utilised to make voting systems independently accessible to blind, vision-impaired, and deafblind citizens. The Foundation’s expertise in accessible formatting and adaptive technology can be made available to the agencies responsible for general elections.

The Foundation requests that its recommendations are considered and implemented so that the 2008 General Election is truly accessible for New Zealand’s blind, vision-impaired, and deafblind voters.

Appendix 1: How telephone voting would be undertaken

Telephone voting would work in much the same way as ordering items on-line. Voters would:

• dial into the system;
• familiarise themselves with candidates and political parties;
• enter a secure zone by keying in a user ID and PIN (as with telephone banking);
• vote by pressing a number on their telephone keypad;
• review their choices;
• be able to deselect choices;
• confirm their choices and exit the secure zone.