Iowa making progress in voting accessibility

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - People who are deaf and hard of hearing face unique challenges this general election. They include accessibility and information.

Daniel Van Sant, Director of disability policy at the Harkin Institute at Drake University says voting accessibility for the deaf community is two fold. Starting with information about candidates, making sure political ads and ballot initiatives are captioned.

”You want to make sure that any candidate event you’re putting on, a debate, a speech, everything should have American sign language as well as cart transcription which is a live captioning transcribed by a human captioner. If they don’t know where a candidate stands, they don’t know who to vote for.” Sant explained.

He says Iowa is making progress, every voting location has a curbside option allowing people to vote without getting out of their car along with people standing by to offer assistance.

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