VEC Victorian Electoral Commission | Voters Voice App

CLIENT

Victorian Electoral Commission

The Victorian Electoral Commission’s (VEC) vision is “All Victorians actively participating in their democracy”. They conduct Victorian State Parliamentary elections, as well as local council elections and various statutory elections and polls.

BRIEF

Make voting easy for everyone

Working in partnership with Scope, the VEC commissioned Conduct to address challenges for an estimated 280,000-300,000 Victorians with communication difficulties. Through a native iPad app called Voters Voice, users can tell election officials their name, where they live and their voting record using a touchscreen keyboard. The app communicates instructions in both Auslan (Australian sign language) and simplified English.

Prepare, guide and explain

We identified a potential segment of voters who were either avoiding going to a voting centre or avoiding voting at all due to the difficulty they had communicating with election staff. We needed to find a way to help people understand the process and remove that inherent difficulty in communicating.

Sue Lang, Director of Communication and Engagement, VEC

Reduce anxiety by facilitating communication

Conduct hosted a series of concept workshops with the VEC and Scope to understand what users may need from a voting support tool. Working in agile and iterative sprints, we produced wireframes and code-based prototypes which were tested and refined with representative users. The designs actively utilise the WCAG 2.0 AAA compliance framework. Apple’s iOS Accessibility APIs and developer tools were useful to measure clarity of speech synthesis to deliver text-to-speech functionality. Users also have access to tutorial videos which cover how to enrol, vote and use the app before arriving at a voting centre.

Digitising traditional communication systems

Voters Voice’s central feature is the communication board. When users download the app, they are guided through a dashboard which includes pre-programmed phrases like “Can you write it down?” and “Can you help me?”. Native iOS Objective-C was selected for its responsive, highly customisable interface qualities and compatibility with screen readers. A content management system enables the VEC to customise content based on data pulled from built-in analytics.

This app provides an opportunity for increased awareness of the support and strategies available to enable everyone to truly be equal at the ballot box. Warwick Gately, Electoral Commissioner

Results

Estimated AU$1M savings from removing hardcopies of the communication board and hiring interpreters
Increased capacity for government staff to meaningfully interact with diverse voters
Easy navigation to the nearest voting centre based on the user profile, device GPS, or an entered address