Among the most celebrated accessibility initiatives in 2018 was the
Blind Faith Upgrade launched by Isobar India,
part of the global Dentsu Aegis Network. This is a kit that
enables a hotel to transform any of its rooms into one that is accessible to
blind and low vision people.
The Blind Faith Upgrade kit was introduced first at Hotel
Ramada in Ajmer, Rajasthan and aims to bring travel
closer to a community, that despite its large presence, continues to be
isolated when it comes to accessible travel.
The kit’s USP lies in its innovative design that provides customer service
as well as creates a business opportunity and has got a good response from
NGOs in countries in Europe and South America, says Isobar India’s
National Creative Director Anish Varghese. The agency is
looking at ways to adapt the solutions there.
The Ramada – Blind Faith Upgrade campaign also won the prestigious
CLIO last year. This is an international award that recognizes
innovation and creative excellence in advertising, design and communication,
The aim says Varghese is to highlight the fact that being disabled is not the
obstacle. Accessibility is.
Technology could bridge the gap between differently-abled and
accessibility, it’s essential to find the right difficulty to tackle. We
are pretty happy about the response from the campaign, both on product and
award perspective. – Anish Varghese, National Creative Director,
Isobar India
Considerable time was spent on research by the Isobar India team before the
launch.
“After we thought of the idea, we really wanted to understand what are the
actual needs of visually impaired people and their challenges, troubles that
they face when they do travel. We wanted to be in touch with their wants and
also be able to make their journey and travel easier,” says Gopa
Kumar, Executive Vice President, Isobar india. ”For this,
extensive discussion and meet ups happened with visually challenged people,
the team also met pilgrims with visual challenges in Ajmer Sharif to
understand their discomfort when they travel and stay.”
This was followed up with discussions with hotel authorities to see how the
kit could be made available and used with minimal changes to the existing
structure. “It was a great learning experience and journey for the team as
they came to face with realities of the challenges that visually challenged
people face day in day out and how ill-equipped our public spaces are in
dealing with them and how as non-disabled people we take everything for
granted,” adds Kumar.
The end result is a thoughtfully conceived product that enables independence
in blind and low vision travellers. The Blind Faith Upgrade kit has
Braille labels, which can convert any phone into a
Braille-enabled phone, reusable-tactile paving tiles to help
customers negotiate their room in the hotel and surrounding areas and Braille
literature with audio assist. There is an audio assist pen as
well, to help visually impaired customers read the hotel menu and converts
written language into an audio description.
It’s a product that has enabled Hotel Ramada to broaden its hospitality
experience to a wider range of people, says Manish Gupta, General
Manager, Hotel Ramada, Ajmer. “We are glad we could take up the
Blind Faith Upgrade initiative. As a hospitality brand, it’s our objective
to deliver accessible tourism to all. This is an important step towards
it.”
Isobar India not only conceived and developed the Blind Faith Upgrade kit but
also built an online platform with a communications campaign to
back it. The film was made fully accessible with audio description to ensure
it reached the target audience. The film has been viewed more than two
million times.
The good news is that going ahead Isobar India is closely looking at other
industries.
“If you see, the solution is tailor-made for hotels as an industry. So, the
obvious questions which we expect is what about other industries? Education,
travel, health etc. The next phase which we are planning is for an industry
other than hotels and we see it as an ongoing project,” says Varghese.
People with disabilities are the world’s largest, fastest-growing minority
group. However, they have been pushed to the margins, largely due to poor
accessibility. Isobar India hopes its product and the powerful online
campaign will encourage more people to think of similar initiatives.
Here is the film on the Blind Faith Upgrade kit
ALSO READ: Breaking notions about travel & disability with accessible
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Source: https://newzhook.com/story/21080
