Indonesia’s all-blind radio crew seeks to shed light on perspectives of disabled community

Surabaya’s first radio station helmed by blind people shares YouTube video highlighting city’s poor infrastructure for visually impaired

The station hopes to expand to include people with other physical impairments, and to advocate for rights

Reading Time:3 minutes

Hannah Abdullah interviews AJI chair Eben Haezer in an impromptu show at Radio braille Surabaya’s soft launch. Photo: Johannes Nugroho

Published: 4:00pm, 10 Dec 2022

A video clip on YouTube shows a blind man in a red batik shirt making his way through a pavement with his white cane.

A water tank, installed during the pandemic to encourage passers-by to wash their hands, stands in his way and he navigates around it. He finally arrives at his destination: a bus stop in the Kaliasin district of Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city.

Some people are waiting at the bus stop. Seeing the man feeling his way through the scattered seats, they stare but do nothing to help him. He is soon joined by three other blind people; two men and a woman.

Hannan Abdullah, Sugihermanto, Atung Yunarto and Tutus Setiawan make up the RBS quartet that launched on December 3 to coincide with the 2022 International Day of Persons With Disabilities. Photo: Johannes Nugroho

This quartet – Tutus Setiawan, 42, Atung Yunarto, 50, Hannan Abdullah, 25 and Sugi Hermanto, 39 – are the pioneers behind the city’s first radio station helmed by an all-blind crew: Radio Braille Surabaya (RBS).

The YouTube video captured a field trip by the RBS crew to test the local public transport system’s accessibility for those with visual impairments.

“We had to give low scores for Surabaya’s public transport in terms of accessibility for people with disabilities,” said RBS director Setiawan who works as an Indonesian language teacher at YPAB, a government-funded school for blind students.

He pointed out that the city’s pavements were littered with obstacles, which posed a challenge to blind people navigating the streets. “There is no information on bus schedules in Braille at any of the bus stops, either. The interior of the buses we boarded was ill-designed for people like us, not to mention the overall unhelpfulness of the bus crew.”

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x