The 2004 Polls Apart report from SCOPE

As in previous years, the disability charity SCOPE has produced a report focusing on the accessibility of voting in the electoral pilots, which this year were all-postal.

These were some of the main points made by SCOPE:

The Parliamentary Rules prescribing wording and layout of key documents impact negatively on the accessibility of the election. The Rules give instructions on how some - but not all - printed material, such as ballot papers, should be designed, but the use of words such as 'large type' or 'conspicuous' does not provide sufficient guidance on producing accessible documents.

Wording of some printed material is also prescribed in the Rules, but the text given is unnecessarily complex, and information is not presented logically or broken down into appropriate sections. Returing Officers cannot alter this wording. "Many voters called the telephone helpline to find basic information which should have been obvious if the forms had been drafted correctly."

Information Cards, provided to all electors, crammed a large amount of information into a small area. "As the government would not pay for the cost of increasing the size of the card many local authorities did not produce the Information Card in a format that is accessible to a large number of people with visual impairments."

Rules required "large type" for words on the ballot paper, but some ballot papers used only 10 point size for candidate names.

Colour-coded ballot papers "were too close in contrast to help differentiate". There was no txtual information about ballot paper colour (helpful to peeople who cannot differentiate).

It was difficult to rip along perforated edges to separate a Declaration of Identity from a ballot paper without ripping the ballot paper, especially for older people.

The Declaration of Identity was "complex and overly legalistic". Some examples were printed using 8 point text.

Instructions to voters were often in fairly small type (e.g. 11 point). Use of pictograms led to text size being reduced.

Considerable dexterity was required to place the documents in envelopes such that the barcode appeared through the window of the envelope.

Election websites published by local authorities did not have any "design-led information to improve the understanding of the all-postal ballots".

Information on website pages was not regularly updated, and the election websites "were not promoted in many ballot packs". "Few local authorites had used a website address as a point of contact for voters in the Instructions to Voter".

While all local authorities responded to email enquiries for assistance to a visualy disabled person, within 24 hours, there was no uniform or standard way of dealing with the enquiries. Many local authorities did no publicise an email addres for election enquiries, and where they did it was often in tiny type (10 point).

After discussing issues such as the lack of time given to voters to return ballot papers and declaration of identity, as well as concerns over coercion and capacity,
the report concludes that, in general, all-postal elections are "inherently inaccessible and restrict the ability of some of the electorate to vote independently".

Further, the 2004 all-postal pilots were more inaccessible than they need have been: "the whole process could be made simpler and more user friendly".