According to IEC spokesperson, Ms Kate Bapela, the Electoral Commission, Blind SA and the South African National Council for the Blind (SANCB) have devised new voting aids and larger ballot papers for the visually impaired. They have developed a special, new 32-window cardboard ballot template to allow visually impaired voters to vote unaided in the elections. “The universal ballot template (UBT) will have windows numbered in braille and with numbers in a large white font so that people with different tactile, literacy and vision levels can use the same template.

“Both the ballot papers and the templates have a tactile recognition feature to assist visually impaired voters with the correct alignment of the ballot paper in the template. Ballot papers have a circular hole punched in the bottom left corner. All the templates have a built-in tactile feature on the top right-hand corner.

“All voting stations in the 2016 municipal elections will be supplied with a UBT and election officials have been trained to assist visually impaired voters to mark their ballots unaided with the use of a UBT and to cast their vote,” she said. Bapela added that voter education on using the UBT has also begun nationwide with the assistance of organisations representing visually impaired persons, including Blind SA and SANCB. “The Electoral Commission has always been sensitive to the needs of voters who are visually impaired. The fact that we need to constantly expand the size of the template to accommodate larger ballot papers is an indication of the strong growth of the multi-party democracy in our country,” says Dr Nomsa Masuku, deputy chief electoral officer for outreach at the Electoral Commission.