The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired pushes for voter accessibility
As San Franciscans head to the polls this week, one nonprofit has been working nonstop to ensure that blind and visually impaired voters in The City aren’t overlooked when casting their ballots.
Lighthouse’s chief executive, Sharon Giovinazzo, joined the nonprofit in October 2022 after leading the Arkansas-based World Services for the Blind for seven years. She lost her vision at 31 due to multiple sclerosis and began working in manufacturing, where she learned about accessible technologies.
“Whether that be AAPI, Latinx, the LGBTQIA+ community, whomever that is because there’s people who are blind in all of those communities,” she said. “We need to be open and have open arms for that.” Primary turnout could be among San Francisco's lowest City residents have been slow to cast their ballots this election season, but voting officials say the pace is par for the course in a primary
A confluence of factors disincentivizes voters with disabilities from casting ballots, Giovinazzo said. Voters could walk into a polling place, assuming an accessible voting machine would be present, only to find paper ballots. Other sites could have a machine but have workers who don’t know how to use it.
“One of the things that I think that my staff is really, really good at — what we’re really good at as an agency — is listening to people,” Giovinazzo said. “What do you need? It’s not always what you want, but it’s what do you need?”
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