(Original Caption) Denver: Wheelchair bound protesters surround an entrance to a Denver polling ... [+]
American voters take to the polls this Tuesday on what is likely to be a historic midterm ballot and the first since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In recent years, there have been signs of encouragement that voters with disabilities are participating more equitably in the electoral process thanks to increased awareness and accessibility.
Last year, research undertaken by Rutgers University and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) found the disability turnout for the 2020 U.S. presidential election to be 17.7 million – an increase of 1.7 million from 2016.
Nonetheless, the same report indicated that there is still work to be done as voters with disabilities were found to be twice as likely to encounter difficulties in casting their ballot as non-disabled voters – with an estimated 1.95 million voters with a disability reporting barriers.
Brink – a mobile app and online portal has its sights firmly set on further narrowing this gap by offering voters with disabilities a one-stop-shop to view a wide variety of accessible voting information.
This includes real-time updates to local electoral regulations, updated candidate information, where to find the nearest accessible polling station and how to communicate about voting rights with officials.
Shut out of the process
Still, in 2022, voters with disabilities may experience a wide variety of access barriers ranging from inaccessible information sources like candidate websites to poor accessibility at polling stations such as the lack of a lift or wheelchair ramp.
They may also encounter varying levels of knowledge from staff at polling stations.
While it may be frustrating for a blind voter to encounter a volunteer who simply doesn’t know how to work an accessible voting machine – for voters with developmental and communication disabilities such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there have been worrying reports of intimidation and the questioning of whether such individuals possess the intellectual capacity to vote.
Brink is a non-profit working towards addressing such issues and is the brainchild of its founder Dylan Bulkeley who has dyslexia. Bulkeley became increasingly aware of some of the problems voters with disabilities routinely experience while working as a disability coordinator on Hilary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The Clinton campaign was the first to involve a highly robust team of disability advisors and Bulkeley describes it as a turning point in disability awareness in federal elections:
“It was as if there was an awakening amongst candidates running for office at that time that the disability community is truly an important constituency group,” he says.
“Previously, politicians would reach out to LGBTQ Americans, or African American voters or women. But it wasn’t until 2016 that they finally started realizing that disabled voters were a specific cohort that was worth campaigning towards,” says Bulkeley.
Buoyed by his learnings during the 2016 campaign and left with a sense of what might have been if the disability contingent had voted to the same extent as the public at large, which would have led to some extra 2.2 million votes cast – he set about founding Brink in 2017.
With coverage in just five battleground states in the 2018 midterms, the app now covers all 50 U.S. states and was built from conducting hours of interviews with voters with disabilities to comprehend the most common access barriers.
Making it simple
Brink is not reinventing the wheel.
The access information it conveys is all publicly available. What the app does, however, is draw together vital information from disparate sources that some voters with disabilities may find difficult to retrieve and houses it all under one roof.
The app provides an easy-to-follow checklist to understand voting options in individual states. There is also a list of telephone numbers to call if encountering issues at polling stations and documents explaining to voters with disabilities what to say if their right to cast a ballot is challenged.
Though there is also an online portal, the mobile app format exists to serve as a permanent reminder of these important resources at the fingertips of the user and provides notifications such as local voting rule changes.
Another reason for the app format is the socio-economic status of the core user group. Disabled people are more likely to be unemployed than non-disabled people and more likely to rely on a smartphone as their sole means of accessing information online.
The beauty of Brink is partly in its simplicity as well as its clear confluence with the principles of universal design.
After all, leaving elderly and disabled people aside — who wouldn’t benefit from clearer and more streamlined information on voting that saves everybody time and effort?
“Of course, we want to have technology that works for disabled people but a lot of our users are people without disabilities who just love the app because it’s easy and simple. We knew that if we could build something accessibly for the disability community – it could be a great resource for everyone,” says Bulkeley.
Returning to the group that Brink was designed to assist first and foremost, Bulkeley views the challenge moving forwards as reaching out to those voters with disabilities that have become disaffected with the U.S. electoral system and have switched their attentions away from voting altogether.
“After the 2016 race, there were more and more disability organizations focusing on voting and many of these groups were working together to drive turnout. But the issue is that not all people with disabilities identify as having a disability or want to be part of one of those bigger organizations,” Bulkeley explains.
“A lot of people just want to live their lives without being an advocate or an activist around their specific condition just to exist in the world.
“So far, we've been able to encourage more voting around the very active people in the disability community. But the work ahead is to truly destigmatize disability and help people recognize that it’s not something to be ashamed of and to get these resources out to people who haven’t been participating in the electoral process for whatever reason.”
Voter disillusionment remains an issue across all social strata – let alone one as diverse and complex as the disability community. While teasing out those socio-political drivers related to citizenship and belonging may prove challenging and take considerable time – just making voting simple and easy is surely a solid start.
