With the European elections taking place, the accessibility of electoral procedures is once again in the spotlight. EBU has published a brochure with clear recommendations for policy makers and elections officials to provide visually impaired citizens with an independent and secret vote. The brochure is coupled with a video, which shows barriers that visually impaired voters currently face in elections and underlines the right for each vote to count.
Paper-based ballots are in principle not accessible for most visually impaired voters. To foster accessible elections in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, assisted voting, alternative voting methods and assistive devices are needed.
The brochure and the video are the latest outputs of the EBU’s Accessible Voting Awareness-Raising (AVA) project. They complement the AVA report published in November 2018. The AVA report compiles good practices in place across Europe and draws some key lessons, based on analysis of five voting methods for blind and partially sighted persons: voting with an assistant, voting with a tactile device, voting by mail, voting in advance and electronic voting.
Further information on the AVA activity can be found on the accessible voting page of our website. Readers should note that the forthcoming EBU Focus newsletter, to be published mid-June, will have as its subject Accessible Elections.
Visually impaired voters should not have to count on anybody for their vote to count!
Latest update; Benedikt Van den Boom, from our German member DBSV, who is leading the campaign on accessible voting, was interviewed on the BBC In Touch broadcast on voting rights, available on their website!