Anyone eligible for elections may exercise their rights to cast a ballot. For the upcoming elections of regional leaders on 9 December, the system will be conducted simultaneously, open for everyone. It is unfortunate for people with vision disabilities, however, as they have no adequate information on their electoral candidates.
Derta Isyajora Rakhman, computer sciences student of Universitas Gadjah Mada, was trying to resolve this problem by designing a special application for the disabled people. This website-based Blindformation app provides the blind people with information on regional elections news as well as candidates. It can be accessed at blindfomation.org. “In essence, this application is based on voice, allowing interaction with the disabled people,” said Derta during talks with journalists in the Fortakgama room, UGM Main Office, on Tuesday (17/11).
To open this app, said Derta, the blind people need to be guided first when opening the website. After that, they only need to press the number buttons to press the required menu. Audio guidance is provided for them. “It’s true that they still need to be guided by other people when they need to open the website. But when it comes to the profiles of candidates, they just need to press the number between 1-8,” he said.
Unfortunately, the information is currently availabe only for candidates from Yogyakarta and Surabaya cities. This is because he made the app just two weeks ago for the Apps Challenge Code for Vote 4.0 competition which was held by the General Election Commission and Perludem NGO on 8 November in Jakarta. This app won the first place for the category of disabilities.
The man born in Pemalang, Central Java, said he would continue to develop the app by extending the contents for candidate profiles, “Before the start of the elections, I hope I will already have produced the profiles for West Java and East Java,” he said.
To the reporters, Derta said the idea to make the app for the blind emerged when he learned that many senior people in villages and isolated areas had come to the balloting stations only to be guided to cast their ballots without knowing for certain the profiles of the leader candidates. “Even the senior people are guided like that, let alone the blind and other disabled people who have little information on them,” he concluded.