Interactive Experience from Charity RNIB Addresses Sight Loss Misconceptions

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has collaborated with Wavemaker UK and Voxly Digital to develop the charity’s first interactive video chat experience.

The tool has been created as part of the wider RNIB #BeforeYouAsk campaign, which aims to address the many misconceptions about sight loss, by educating the public through relatable scenarios to encourage them to change their attitudes and behaviours towards people with sight loss.

A series of #BeforeYouAsk films use everyday relatable experiences; in the workplace, romantic relationships, applying make-up, watching football, travelling on the night bus and unavoidable school message groups, to banish myths around what it’s really like to live with sight loss.

Hosted on the RNIB website, the #BeforeYouAsk interactive video chat tool is designed to address the weird, awkward, and at times hurtful questions that  blind and partially sighted people are frequently asked by sighted people about their day-to-day lives. It features over 40 questions and misconceptions sourced from people with sight loss, Ask the Public, Reddit, and Google predictive search form. The answers are provided in video form by the campaign’s blind and visually impaired cast.  

Rozzi Merrington, head of applied innovation, Wavemaker UK, said, “However well meaning, in an attempt to understand how people with sight loss live their lives, sighted people are inadvertently asking questions that can be hurtful or simply inappropriate. We sourced the most common of these and addressed them head on in this tool. Featuring answers to questions like “can you dream?”, “how do blind people have sex?” and “how do you pick up your dog’s poo?”, this tool gives people an opportunity to ask their questions and get clued up.. We hope that this experience will encourage people to “see the person, not the sight loss” and motivate better public interactions towards blind and partially sighted people.”

Martin Wingfield, director of brand, at RNIB, added, “RNIB’s #BeforeYouAsk campaign uses humour and familiar scenarios to make people think. The campaign also underscores a serious point about the misconceptions people face and the barriers these lead to in terms of people living independently. By partnering with Wavemaker and Voxly Digital, as well as with our cast of visually impaired actors, we’re providing a reference point where sighted people can go to find out more about visual impairment. We hope our first interactive video chat experience, alongside the six campaign films, will go a long way to increasing understanding of what it's like to live with sight loss and to reduce the misguided everyday questions that many blind and partially sighted people face.”

Wavemaker’s Applied Innovation team worked with their partners, Voxly Digital, alongside Wavemaker’s Studio team for creative direction to design, develop and deliver the interactive tool. Following the campaign, it will live on as part of RNIB’s educational toolkit here.