ONCE Euskadi Virtual Bell Race
Social Project
Since 2016 at Impredecible we have devised and developed awareness-raising and celebratory activities for ONCE Euskadi aimed at both society and the blind and partially sighted community.
We have learned to eradicate the typical cliché about overcoming obstacles that people with disabilities deconstruct in their daily lives; a cliché representative of a paternalistic and enabling point of view.
With the COVID pandemic, our dependency on screens to perform everyday acts such as shopping, banking, following classes or holding group conversations was total. The rapidity of change highlighted the accessibility, usability and intelligibility of these digital environments. This awareness inspired us to develop a new Virtual Bell Race which would make visible the problems faced by the visually impaired or blind in the online environment to different entities. We were looking for improvements in these environments.
We initially invited universities, banks and supermarkets with online shops to browse their own online environments privately with ONCE Euskadi affiliates.
Then the ONCE affiliates showed them how to navigate on the devices they use every day (computers, tablets or mobile phones), showing them their tricks, what works, their difficulties and where they get stuck.
We navigated with specific software: screen readers, Braille lines, Zoom text completing the info with explanations and support from ONCE’s technicians so that the guests lived the full navigation experience with these softwares, giving quick and simple clues to establish improvements in these environments.
Both the representatives of the management teams and the technicians of their websites or digital environments attended. Together they were able to test the accessibility of their environments first hand.
We carried out evaluations afterwards where we were told that it had been a profound experience. The knowledge acquired has led to improvements in the online environments already in place in many of the organisations that have participated.
