Election Access Monitoring By Our Volunteers

Blind Youth Association Nepal(BYAN) was given the permit to monitor the polling stations in 10 districts all over Nepal in the House of Representative and provincial level election on November 20, 2022. One member each from BYAN was present in 10 polling stations, mainly to assist the people with disabilities to cast a vote and to observe the accessibility as well as the behavior of the authorities towards them. We provided this oppurtunity to the people with disabilities which included people with physical disability, hearing and visual impairments, parents of intellectual disability, to help them realize that despite their challenges, they can work in any field that they want to and achieve everything that they desire. We were very pleased and proud to see them hard at work and also, very satisfied when they expressed their gratitude towards BYAN to provide them this opportunity. 

Furthermore, we prepared two sets of questionnaires for each monitor to fill. One of them contained the questions related to the accessibility of the polling stations as well as the IC materials provided by the Election Commission for the people with disability. And the other one was for the civilians, who were interviewed by our monitors. The main objective of the two questionnaires was to attain the shortcomings of the polling stations so that they can be overcome in the future.