Lighthouse Guild Holds Accessible Voting Workshop for Visually Impaired NYers

A large cohort of visually impaired New Yorkers attended Lighthouse Guild presentations about how to effectively vote on Aug. 21, and even got a crack at some demo ballot-casting machines that helped them test the process.

Lighthouse Guild, located at 250 W. 64th St., is a nonprofit that provides social services and medical help for New York City’s visually impaired community.

Lighthouse Guild CEO Calvin W. Roberts, MD, told Straus News why hosting such a training was essential: “The usual voting process requires vision. You have to be able to read the ballot. So what happens if you can’t read the ballot?” He noted that the training sessions would ideally provide an answer to that question.

Cheryl Pemberton-Graves, Lighthouse Guild’s Chief Volunteer Officer, can take a lot of credit for the existence of the training. She said that helping the city’s visually impaired community vote isn’t just practical; it’s also a form of empowerment. These people are “exercising their civil right to vote,” Pemberton-Graves added. “It’s so important. We get excited, and our clients get excited, when they realize that they can retain their independence.”

Ariel Merkel, the American With Disabilities Act Coordinator for the NYC Board of Elections, was invited to helm the process. She began by noting that the BOE’s job was to ensure that NYC’s 1,200-plus poll sites are ADA-accessible, come November 5 (and during the nine days of early voting). “We have to make sure you get into the building,” Merkel said.

This means making sure that entryways are safe, pathways remain smooth, and elevators make audible “ding” noises. Half of NYC’s poll sites, about 600, need temporary ramps installed before election day.

When it comes to the actual voting process, something called a “Ballot Marking Device” will come in handy for visually impaired New Yorkers. Two of the hulking grey metal contraptions were brought to the August 21 training, so that prospective voters could give them a test run. One will be placed at every polling site in NYC when voting begins.

Each machine has a large touchscreen, a keypad with Braille, headphones, and a stylus for effective candidate selection. There’s also a “rocker paddle” with large “YES” and “NO” selection buttons on it, not to mention a “Sip N’ Puff” contraption that allows voters to choose candidates by using different breathing techniques (inhale for “no” and exhale for “yes”). As the machine’s name suggests, it only “marks” a visually impaired voter’s ballot, Merkel clarified. Casting the ballot is done separately.

”Voters have the right to vote privately and independently, and I want to stress that,” Merkel said. “That’s what these machines enable you to do.”

After an extensive Q/A that allowed attendees to memorize the finer points of the process, people lined up to make mock vote selections on the machine. Bill, a longtime volunteer at Lighthouse Guild, was first up for one of them.

In an interview conducted with Straus after he had finished, Bill expressed profound satisfaction with the Ballot Marking Device. Prior voting experiences were more tricky due to a lack of light or small ballot print, Bill said, so he would have to use a magnifier. “This machine allows me to hear where I’m at [on the ballot], look at it, renew it, and check it,” he concluded.

Then, everybody needed to filter out of the conference room, because another packed session was about to get underway.