Last Updated on: 21st April 2015, 09:32 am
I usually don’t wait until the day before advanced polling starts to put up a link to accessible stuff around the region, but a. Captain Nameless Illness is making me work really slow, and b. We’re still figuring out this huuuge city, so didn’t have much of a clue. So, it took longer to make sense of the info that was available.
But here it is. I would have been lazy and linked to this one beautiful page that had things consolidated in one handy place, but their page didn’t have Cambridge on it, the information looked slightly wrong, and commenting required you to respond to an inaccessible CAPTCHA. Way to go, Independent Living Centre Waterloo Region, way to go. *clapclapclap*. I should amend that, at least they’re looking into alternatives, but um? How wasn’t this caught sooner? How long have they been wandering along with that CAPTCHA up there?
And while I’m dealing out sarcastic applause, I give one to the City of Kitchener’s election page for posting the “voter’s guide to an accessible election,” a document that clearly states that the guide is for the clerk’s use, and to use the sections that are correct for their city/town, and to not make the whole guide available to the voters, like they did here. Woooo! Hehehehehe! Good job!
So, I’m going to have to find all the info for each city myself and assemble it here.
Which is proving more difficult than I thought.
Kitchener
On the City of Kitchener’s voter information page, there is a heading of “special needs” which appears to have most of the necessary information. However, they don’t mention a detail that I read about greeters being available to open external non-accessible doors if necessary, or the part where if you brought a buddy with you to vote, you’d have to take an oath that you were unable to vote on your own. Um, gross?
The skinny is all polling stations are mostly wheelchair accessible, unless of course the outside doors don’t have buttons to open them, but if you want to use those accessible voting machines, you have to go to one of the five advance voting spots linked to under “advance voting”.
Waterloo
So…I hope RIM Park is easy to get to, because if you need an interpreter or one of those accessible voting machines and live in Waterloo, that’s where you’re goin’, sucka. Also, I hope if you need an interpreter, your job doesn’t mind you scootin’ out between 2 and 4 in the afternoon. Blech. Also, what’s up with the line “Voters with disabilities are encouraged to vote at advance voting locations where assistance is available.”
As opposed to those barren wastelands of nothingness. Maybe a comma could have cleared that up, i.e. don’t vote on election day like the unwashed masses, you disabled voter you. Or maybe, like I thought, it meant go where the service you require is. Or maybe, like I alternatively thought, it meant don’t go to some of the advance polling locations…we staff those with lazy arseholes!
More info can be found on this Waterloo where to vote page.
Cambridge, poor, little, left out in the cold Cambridge
But you’re a rather progressive little out in the cold city! You, unlike the rest of the region, think folks with disabilities should be able to vote using assistive voting equipment on election day. And, and, people in Cambridge can vote by phone and online! Yes!
…
with the caveat that blind folks might wanna vote by phone, since according to this KW Record article, the online version has a whole lot of CAPTCHA goin’ on. You also might want to get your 13-digit PIN from your voter card written down since no PIN, no votin’.
For all the juice on Cambridge election options, here’s their page on voting options. I don’t like the not so nice touch of having every supplementary document available in pdf, but at least the viewer has a download option, so whatever.
Aaack. That took far more effort than I originally bargained for. But at least I could have fun with it. Hopefully I manage to post this without breaking my links. Apparently today, concentration isn’t my strong suit and things I could do in my sleep before are a bit of a struggle.
Everybody, if a municipal election is coming up, get out and vote. There’s gotta be a way to do it that works for you.