LS polls: ‘Meghalaya Sign Bank App’ to assist persons with hearing disability

Shillong, Apr 1: Apart from special Braille ballot papers for visually impaired voters, the Election authority in Meghalaya has also made arrangement to assist persons with hearing disability through the ‘Meghalaya Sign Bank App’ for ensuring inclusive elections.

“114 election terms are already recorded in the form of short video clips with sign languages. They will be useful for polling officials to understand and be able to communicate with hearing impaired voters,” Chief Electoral Officer, FR Kharkongor said on Monday.

Kharkongor said that this is one of the measures taken for achieving the goal of accessible elections and with the objective to ensure no voter is left behind as per Election Commission’s slogan.

Stating that there are provisions laid out for the rights of people with disabilities, he said the braille ballot papers for the visually impaired will be available in all the 3,617 polling stations that are going to the polls on April 11.

“Apart from that the visually impaired will also get a braille-enabled Epic card. We are also thinking of issuing braille voter’s slips for them but that is still being explored,” he added.

Meghalaya has a total of 804 voters who are visually impaired.

The CEO informed that senior government officials have also been appointed as accessibility observers who will be going to each and every district to see how far these measures are taking into effect for the benefit of persons with disabilities.

“In addition, we will also be having magnifiers for people with weak visions so that they can read their names in the electoral rolls,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has also decided to involve youths from different organisations like the Meghalaya Bharat Scouts & Guides, NSS, NYK as ‘Matdata Mitra’ or ‘Election Friends’ to assist persons with disabilities during the polling day.

“They (election friends) will be deployed in those polling stations where there are large numbers of persons with disabilities to ensure there is priority voting for such people besides helping senior citizens and mothers,” Kharkongor said.

According to him, necessary instructions have been given to all the Returning Officers to ensure these facilities are in place for persons with disabilities on April 11.

Asked, the CEO said that persons with disabilities will not have to stand in long queue for exercising their franchise.

In order to address the problem of urban apathy, Kharkongor said, “We have come up with Queue Management App. The voter can just send his/her Epic card number to the particular number in the App and will get an update about the length of the queue, and how many people there are at various point of time in the day so that accordingly he/she can plan to come and cast his vote. However we are not giving this information blanket to everyone as this will focus only on urban areas and we hope this will address the urban apathy.”

According to him, people in urban areas generally distaste for standing in queue unlike in rural villages where people like to come out in large numbers as for them it is like a day spent out as a real festival.