Amend ballot paper for the deaf � activist

Maranyane Ngwanaamotho | Wednesday October 22, 2014 17:02

She said they had realised this after they conducted an assessment among the disabled and trained them on how to go through the voting process.  Keoagile explained that the deaf depend on sight, and would need to see facial pictures of the representatives. “The deaf want to see pictures of faces because they know only a few politicians, and might also not know the parties and which of those certain individuals belong to,” she said.  She added that party symbols would be confusing more especially as there are new political parties. 

“It would be hard to pin point who belongs to which party. With pictures, the process would be easier as they would recognise faces and could immediately identify people,” she said. Keoagile said the IEC had recently introduced Braille for the visually impaired, which was a positive development. She however pleaded that the deaf be included. The IEC has reportedly stated that they don’t have a budget to accommodate the deaf.

“There are four forms of communication which are English, Setswana, Braille and sign language. It is not fair to leave the other out and say it is because you do not have money,” she said.   She said Botswana should learn from other countries, like South Africa, which included everyone in their election communication debate. Keoagile claimed that she had suggested to Botswana Television (Btv) management to have a sign interpreter during the elections’ debates that were hosted for Members of Parliament on television.

“They however said it was expensive. I then suggested sub-titles but they didn’t do that either. This is not fair. We are part of society and have the right to not only vote but also partake in the political discourse,” she said.

She added that the television debates would have been very helpful especially to the disabled who are unable to access freedom squares to get the message for themselves.

“Old people, even the young struggle to push wheelchairs to freedom squares. They have missed out on all the information but they still have to vote which is not fair,” she said.  Meanwhile, IEC has reportedly agreed for the federation to submit its own people to observe how the disabled fare at polling stations.  “We want to know if our people are struggling to read, to see, to use Braille and document their whole experience,” said Keoagile.  Officials from Btv and IEC were not available for comment at the time of going to print.