Raghuraman Kalyanraman
honorary advisor, Karna Vidhya Foundation
Professor Raghuraman, a faculty in the Department of English at Government College of Arts in Nandanam, has already begun working with visually-challenged students to see if they have had any difficulty getting their voter’s ID card. Raghuraman is also visually-challenged. He shows them how to gain access to a tactile map to understand the location of the polling booths.
He continues to appeal to the Election Department to upload a readable version of Form 12D. The professor is planning a meet-up with students and parents to brief them about their meeting their responsibility, which is to vote.
“We keep highlighting the issue till improvements are carried out”Smitha Sadasivan
D. Gnana Bharathi
founder, Spinal Injured Persons Association
As a wheelchair user, Gnana Bharathi has been vocal about the need for accessibility for persons with disabilities. Common pain points at polling booths a missing foot rest of the wheelchair or a broken armrest. Every polling booth is supposed to have at least two wheelchairs in place, but if the wheelchairs carry these faults, having them hardly helps.
On April 6, Gnana Bharathi visited a polling booth at Thousand Lights for an access audit. “My request to GCC commissioner D. Radhakrishnan is to ensure that 10% of the government polling booths in the city have 100% accessibility features. This target can slowly be extended in the coming years,” he says.
P. Saravanan
chairman, Disabled Social Justice Movement
Recently, Saravanan was with disability department representatives in Thiruvottiyur checking access to polling booths where a a new ramp had been introduced. At a higher secondary school, the toilets had been made disabled-friendly and Saravanan is happy about it.
For the next few weeks, he and his team supporting him will be visiting houses in Thiruvottiyur, Mint and Manali asking people to get their hands inked on April 19. “The assured minimum facilities should be provided at all polling booths,” says the 33-year-old who has loco-motor disability.
M.G. Rakul
member, Tamil Nadu Dwarfism Association
Forty-year-old M.G. Rakul represents over one lakh dwarf population in the State. Last time, the Ekkaduthangal resident had a tough time exercising his right to vote at a booth as no stool had been provided for him to stand up on, and press the button on the EVM. “What happens is we sometimes end up pressing the wrong button as we cannot see, and we hate to be carried,” says Rakul.
The least they seek of the election officials is to be sensitive to the challenges faced by those who are unusually short. As member of Tamil Nadu Dwarfism Association, Rakul says he is doing everything within his might to push all the 200 members with whom he is in direct touch to motivate people to vote.
Volunteers audit a private school in Mandaveli where the floor is not friendly to those in a wheelchair.
Smitha Sadasivan
member, Disability Rights Alliance
For Smitha Sadasivan, there is nothing new about coordinating with the State Election Commission or Greater Chennai Corporation officials for elections. This time, with the support of other ambassadors and members, Smitha is working to get the Chief Electoral Officer, Tamil Nadu to upload the polling locations geo-tagged and with pictures on its website.
Geo-tagging will enable voters to find their polling booth as well as use navigation to reach there without anybody’s help.
With a checklist in place, which supplements the one given by the Election Commission, Smitha, an accessibility consultant with the Election Commission of India, and her team have already fanned out to polling stations.
On April 5, Smitha and a few other volunteers visited a private school in Mandaveli, which has been designated as a polling booth, and found the gradient at the entrance to be inconvenient. There was no permanent or standard ramp leading to any of the classrooms. Despite carrying a letter, a few schools in Mylapore did not let her team in. Frivolous reasons were reportedly given for denying permission.
With just a few weeks to go for the D-day, how easy is to make adaptations based on feedback by ambassadors?
Smitha says adaptations are easy and minimal if they are understood properly. That is also why the ambassadors are personally visiting as many booths to show people at authority the pain points they experience when adaptations are not carried out as per standards.
“We keep highlighting the issue till improvements are carried out,” says the GCC-appointed ambassador for multiple sclerosis.. She cites the example of Bhavana Botta, an entrepreneur with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy, who had to be carried to a polling booth in Saidapet. Later, a group of them did an access audit and had a ramp incorporated into it. But she was not lucky again. A barricade prevented Bhavana from accessing the classroom and she had to be carried to the room. Says Smitha, “We need to keep checking till the last to ensure everything is in place.”
