Hong Kong volunteers bring news of extradition bill protests to city’s visually impaired
- Team of four add audio descriptions to videos and pictures online so that blind can still know what’s going on
- Facebook page started in June to keep users up to date with extradition protests
The protests against Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill have been all over the news in recent weeks, but for the likes of Jasmine Lee, who is blind but wants to know more about what’s going on, information has been hard to come by.
With no vision, the 27-year-old relies on the voice-over function of her smartphone, which automatically reads out text, to consume news.
However, as visual elements, including videos and photographs, dominate today’s media, she finds it difficult to get information without audio description, a problem that impacts the city’s 174,800 visually impaired residents, of whom 7,800 are completely blind, like Lee.
“Much of the online information is in the forms of pictures and videos. For us visually impaired people, we can’t watch them,” she says.
People with hearing impairments face similar challenges. According to the latest survey conducted by community organisation Hong Kong Deaf Empowerment, only 52 per cent of people with hearing difficulties surveyed said they were aware the extradition bill had been suspended.