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Case Studies
The following case studies help explain the services that The Pollen Shop provides. They are an explanation of how we integrate inclusive communication principles, processes and structures.
Polls Apart
Polls Apart is a national campaign run by the disability charity Scope. It has over 2000 volunteer researchers actively participating
The objective of the Polls Apart is to make elections accessible for everyone.
Currently disabled voters are excluded or marginalised in the democratic
process. For example, polling stations are often sited in inaccessible buildings
or the election material does not meet best practice guideline to ensure
people with communication impairments can read and understand it.
For the last 3 years The Pollen Shop has provided project management solutions that have enabled Polls Apart become one of the most effective and revolutionary grassroots campaigns in the UK. Our role has been simply to provide Scope and its campaigners with the framework it needed to do its job.
For Polls Apart to be successful we needed to convince Local government that they should and could improve access, national and devolved government that they should fund improvements and provide an enhanced legislative framework to guarantee access and the media that it was an issue worth covering.
Access to elections is a dry subject that few people automatically care about. Yet it is fundamentally important to our democracy. It was a major challenge to get ordinary people interested and actively helping. The way we sought to do this was to extend the campaigner participation.
We wanted access audits undertaken in over 70% of constituencies in England and Wales.
Scope did not have a lot of money to spend but was rich in other resources, an experienced campaigns team, media support and a large pool of volunteers.
How we helped
The Pollen Shop;
- Developing a national research program to gather evidence of access barriers at polling stations
- Providing the technological framework to gather and process data
- Creating campaigner resources on and off line including the polls apart minisite
- Developing multilingual mutliformat material for campaigners
- Managing an interactive media strategy
- Developed an interactive participation new media experience involving websites, SMS and interactive digital TV for the 2003 party conferences
- Providing on-line resources for returning officers and other people in local government who want to improve access.
Outcomes
Since The Pollen Shop has been involved over 3000 polling stations have been surveyed in England and Wales. 1200 people have become active campaigners. Polls Apart has received considerable national, local and online coverage. The minisites receive over 1000 user sessions a month.
There is now a separate campaign in Wales supported by the national assembly. But most importantly the accessibility of polling stations is improving across most of the UK.
Open Source
The Pollen Shop has an open source policy. This means we actively encourage other organisations to use our techniques and adapt them to meet their needs. This is how this can work in practice.
Polls Apart does not cover Northern Ireland. This is because historically Scope only works in England and Wales. Disability Action Northern Ireland recognised there was a gap and approached The Pollen Shop and asked for information about how they could get involved. We explained that using our open source policy they were able to use our techniques, processes and technology. This would enable them to run the campaign in Northern Ireland without incurring development costs. Scope were more than happy to support another disability organisation improve accessible democracy.
Although Disability Northern Ireland used the general technological framework of Polls Apart they naturally wanted to adapt this to meet their need. Our web development team were able to modify the existing structures to create something unique.
Vote today - An award winning collaboration
During the 2003 party conferences The Pollen Shop created the structure and technology for an interactive exhibition for Scope. The exhibition was designed to explain to delegates the issues around making e-voting accessible for disabled people. Earlier in the year there had been a number of pilots across England where e-voting method had been available. Scope had a concern that if this was adopted more widely it would exclude many disabled people.
We understood that to turn this technical subject into something that was understandable we had to provide the delegates with an experience that would explain the issues. We devised a way of doing this by creating a mock election and the technology to go with it. So we created a voting platform called Vote Today.
The project was collaboration between Scope, The Pollen Shop and disability campaigners. We provided the technical and structural support. Scope devised the creative framework and developed campaign materials.
Vote Today behaved like real e-voting election system. Delegates could cast a ballot using a number of different platforms remotely or in person at the exhibition stand. The stand was designed to look like a mini living room complete with a digital TV, internet access and a phone. Delegates weren't restricted to only voting at the stall. This included voting by the internet, on TV through a digital TV platform, on mobile phones through SMS voting or by a paper postal vote. We also created an accessible multimedia presentation of an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) telephone.
Each method of voting behaved for the most part normally. Each was however booby trapped with apparently random access barriers. The delegate would be unaware that the problems were intentional. Each voter encountered at least one problem that would make it difficult for them to vote. This included the Digital TV with tiny text on screen, the voice on the telephone voting was sometimes too quite, text messaging process was complicated and instructions were too long and difficult to read.
The barriers created significant problems which would cause the delegate to stop and have to ask for assistance. When they did this the individual barrier, its consequences and how it could be removed was explained.
Our objective was not to make the delegate feel like a disabled person or in anyway to pretend that they had an impairment. We wanted the people using the system whether disabled or non disabled to simply recognise there are barriers that could prevent a person voting using the many e-voting platforms and that these can with forethought be removed.
The Vote Today concept was a great success. At the Liberal Democrat Party conference it was awarded the best stand and at the Labour Party conference it was voted by delegates to be the best exhibition. More importantly however it raised an important issue and conveyed complex information to local and national politicians and the media.
Alun Michael MP
The Pollen Shop designed a triple A accessible website for Cardiff south and Penarth MP Alun Michael. Our brief was to design a site that would be as easy to use as possible. Alun felt that all his constituents should feel comfortable using it and could see it as a practical resource.
We developed www.alunmichael.com by going back to basics. Although we kept a simple navigation system we tried to rout the user through the site as organically as possible from within the content. Although the site provides information on Alun and his constituency the focus of the site is providing effective contact information which the constituent can use to take their enquiry further.
