The general assembly of Blindrafélagið, Icelandic Association of the visually impaired was held digitally in the middle of October. The board had postponed the meeting from May due to the meeting restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting was held as a Zoom meeting and we used the "raise hand" feature for simple voting. All in all, that was a good solution, but blind participants told that they were not always sure if they had voted or not. The technical lead of the meeting counted the votes and helped participants to unmute and mute their microphones if needed. The meeting was also streamed through our WebBox to those who did not want to participate but were interested in following.
We introduced a special election system which allowed us to hold elections of the chairman and the board members in a secure digital way. The Icelandic company, Könnuður, is specialized in digital voting and adjusted the system to work with screen readers and keyboard shortcuts. All who participated managed to vote without difficulties. The identification of the voters was done by using their mobile phone number. For those who could not vote digitally we offered possibility to vote in our office.
In general, we were satisfied with this arrangement. The members living in rural areas of Iceland were pleased to be able to participate at home. This was the first time we introduced the option of voting online and it was received well by all members.
By Marjakaisa Matthíasson.