We conducted a market survey with the employees from Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s Dialogue in the Dark (DiD) social enterprise. The social enterprise was created to educate and used as a research hub to learn more about issues facing the disabled in Singapore. It is run solely by Ngee Ann Polytechnic students as well as their vision-impaired guides.
Upon request for an interview, DiD had a condition that we go through a one-hour tour in their Dark Site, where we get to experience the day in the life of a blind person. This one-hour tour will be guided by a vision-impaired guide and they’ll bring us through small details such as recognising foods, pressing the doorbells, and even crossing the road. After the tour, we conducted a short interview asking them for their opinions regarding the project we have in mind.
Tour in the Dark Site (Conducted by Vanessa)
The Dark Site consisted of 5 different parts, ranging from gardens to the Singapore River, to identifying foods and crossing roads. The tour was a great start to the interview as it allowed me to have a small glimpse of the day in the life of a blind person. The tour also allowed me to become more acquainted with the two blind guides I was with, Auntie Lyn and Uncle Kah Yong. They shared with me their life stories and when they’ve turned blind and had to change their lives dramatically. It made me feel that the device that we were creating will truly make a change in someone’s life.
The Interview
I had the privilege to have a dialogue with Auntie Lyn in the Dark Site about our motivations to help the disabled as well as how our device would help the blind. She expressed that the device is a good idea to help people commute especially when not all pedestrian lights have an audio output. She expressed that in many residential areas and in large junctions in Orchard Road do not have audio outputs due to complaints from the general public. Especially in residential areas, some audio outputs were removed by LTA as residents complained they were too noisy. In other areas, the audio outputs will be switched off after 9pm making it difficult for the vision-impaired to navigate easily. After my dialogue with Auntie Lyn, I spoke at length with Uncle Kah Yong who gave us many possible scenarios, problems and issues that will be relevant to our device. The next blog post will include more details about this interview. In summary, Uncle Kah Yong was optimistic with our device and had even invited us to go back and test our final prototype with them.
Transcript of interview with Uncle Kah Yong
After reviewing the needs of the visually impaired through our market research, we are better informed of the practical needs of making a product for the visually impaired. This information would guide us along as we decide on the hardware and software of our project. We hope that at the end of our project, the end-product that we produce would be able to meet the needs of the visually impaired and be functionally useful for them.