NGOs that deal with the issues that face the disabled population often complain that the disabled are only remembered on December 3, the International Day of Disabled Persons, and during elections. But even that is only formal in nature and does nothing to change the lives of disabled people.

Article 4 of the Armenian Constitution states that every adult has a right to an equal vote and secret ballot. There are 148,662 disabled people registered inArmeniaas of January 1, 2007. Eight thousand of them are aged under 18 years, while the rest have the right to vote. Does the equal right to elections exist in their case?

“678 million drams have been spent from the state budget for these parliamentary elections. But not even a few hundred thousand drams of that amount were allocated to people with physical disabilities,” said Suren Ohanyan, the President of the NGO Paros.

“The problems of the disabled are usually not part of a political party's election manifesto,” said Suren Ohanyan, “And in those rare cases when a political party comes up with a plan for the disabled, it remains on paper alone.”

During the election campaign, the disabled are not given any consideration. For example, there is no sign-language translation, or ticker on the screen with the spoken information in written text, for those with hearing disabilities.

The NGOs that deal with the issues of the disabled population say that if there has been any progress of late, it is due solely to their own efforts. The government is usually not the side that takes the initiative.

Unison is an organization working with people confined to wheelchairs. As part of the Development of a Favorable Society for the Disabled in Armenia program, with the support of the Dutch Government and the Open Society Institute, they published a booklet for the members of electoral committees regarding how best to interact with disabled voters.

It's Your Choice, a monitoring organization, has organized a training session for the disabled in each provincial region about the election procedure and observation missions.

Paros has had a video clip shot withParadiseadvertising agency, which aims to draw public attention to the difficulties faced by the disabled during election time. Clips have also been made about the election process, with translations into sign language.

Despite improvements in the Election Code, the reality of the situation is that for people who have difficulty in reaching the voting site or filling out the ballot paper, there still seems to a be a long way to go for free access to the election process.

The Disabled in Wheelchairs

The Election Code does not allow voting through mobile ballot boxes, except for people who are undergoing in-patient treatment. Therefore, a person confined to a wheelchair has to get to a polling station to cast his ballot.

Decree number 18/1-A of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) has the following to say about people with limited mobility –

“In order to allow the entry to the voting station of disabled people in wheelchairs and voters with limited mobility, community heads must make necessary temporary adjustments to the building entrance on the day of voting.”

The president of Unison, Armen Alaverdyan, noted that a monitoring project undertaken before the 2003 election revealed that the entrances to only ten of the 419 voting stations observed were accessible to people in wheelchairs. Two or three of them had ramps, while the entrances of the rest were simply not raised.

The situation has remained nearly unchanged during these elections.

“One could argue that setting up ramps costs money,” said Armen Alaverdyan, “But what about those cases when the voting station is set up on the second floor or even higher? How can a disabled person go up using the stairs?”

“I had this problem during the last elections. I went to vote, but they couldn't lift me up to the second floor. They proposed bringing down a ballot paper for me to fill in, which they would then take up and cast for me. That was against the law; it violated the principle of a secret ballot. I filled in the ballot; the committee member and my wife took it upstairs. On the way, the committee member tried to convince my wife that they should have a look at the paper and see if I'd filled it in correctly,” narrated Alaverdyan.

Parosis now setting up one ramp each in eight cities, based on a grant they received from the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES). “Of course, this doesn't solve the access problem, but it can serve as an example or set a precedent,” said Suren Ohanyan, who is managing the program.

The Visually Impaired

An IFES program for visually impaired voters who could not fill in the ballot paper on their own has produced cardboard versions of the ballot paper, with V-shaped notches in the places where the voter is expected to place a tick mark.

According to Ohanyan, the cardboard pieces allow the blind to easily cast their votes, irrespective of whether they have knowledge of Braille.

“There are special marks on the cardboard in the form of dots – all they have to do is count them. We are recording audio books, where the numbers for the parties in the proportional voting list will be read out. So a blind voter, by counting the number corresponding to his party of choice, can cast his vote.”

In any case, for those who do not wish to vote in this way, the old alternative exists. If a voter cannot sign on their own because of visual impairment, they may request the assistance of someone at the voting station who is neither a member of the committee nor a party representative.

Voters with Hearing Disabilities

On March 29, on the initiative of the NGOs working with the disabled, a meeting was organized with representatives of political parties. Those political parties who attended were encouraged by the NGOs to include sign language in their advertisements and press conferences for people with hearing disabilities. If that were not possible due to financial reasons, then another alternative was to provide a ticker at the bottom of the screen for these clips.

“Unfortunately,” noted Unison president Armen Alaverdyan, “Nobody responded to our request. I don't know if the reasons are technical or if there is simply a lack of will.”

The Mentally Disabled

Citizens with mental disabilities were not included in IFES programs. Some NGOs have suggested that this group of citizens should not be allowed to vote, but a united position does not exist.

NGOs which work with the mentally disabled have suggested that a geometric figure should be drawn next to the name of each political party on the ballot box, because people with mental disabilities remember better using shapes. However, it remains obvious that many of them remain incapable of distinguishing among the parties and their proposed programs.

ObservationMissionof the Disabled

The NGO's working with the disabled have been actively implementing an observation mission. During these elections, 70 disabled people are preparing to work with It's Your Choice as election monitors. Unison has 18 observers, seven of whom are disabled – six are in wheelchairs, one is blind. The blind observer will be working with an assistant, which is unprecedented inArmenia.

Opinions about the blind observer are contradictory. It's Your Choice president Harutyun Hambardzumyan said that it was against the Election Code, because it clearly stated that there could only be one person from each organization at the voting station. Besides this, it turned out that the blind person had been certified as an observer, while in reality the observer was the assistant. The NGO administrators said that the attitude towards disabled observers during the last election was varied. Often, there were raised eyebrows or tears, because inArmeniathe stereotype that prevails is that disabled people require only treatment and care.