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New Vision Podcast
New Vision Podcast
The mark they cannot see: When consumer protection leaves the blind behind [PART 1]
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This two-part podcast explores the gap between policy and lived reality for visually impaired consumers in Uganda, despite the country’s progress toward inclusive development under the Millennium Development Goals.
The podcast ultimately asks a critical question: can a system truly protect all citizens if it excludes some? Until inclusive measures are fully implemented, consumer safety in Uganda will remain uneven, visible only to those who can see it.
Uganda has made significant strides in the sustainable development goals aimed at disability inclusions over the years. Safer walkways have been paved for persons with visual disability along the country's main superhighways. While rams lead into public buildings and supermarkets for the physically challenged, yet inside supermarkets is where consumers with disabilities suffer the biggest human injustice, the inability to tell whether the consumer product is safe or risky. Moreover, this difference between safety and danger lies in the consumer protection system only visible to those without visual impairment. To understand what Consumer Protection Body, Uganda National Bureau of Standards, UNBS, is doing to include thousands of visually impaired consumers, we speak to some consumers with disabilities in northern Uganda. For a country with safety labels and certification marks ingrained in packaging materials, the visually impaired must be protected through the braille. This is not the case in many bustling markets across the country where countless products from beverages to cosmetics compete for attention. Yet, in this full view, the safety levels of these products remain opaque to a section of the population yearning for protection and inclusion. One of them is 18-year-old Lona Akite, a visually impaired senior 4 student at Gulu High School in Badegelaybi Division, Gulu City. Akite can tell with utmost perfection the nature of the product she is picking from the shelf of the supermarket, whether it is liquid, solid, or powder. Today I accompanied her to a shopping. So you can have this and fill it. Are you able to fill it? Yes. Can you describe what you're holding in your hand?
SPEAKER_00Okay. The way I think this one is a biscuit, like its name, I could say it if not cream or chocolate. So it is in a box, a long box.
SPEAKER_01Can you tell me if you can identify the quality mark of UNBS, the expiry dead, and other vital information that you should access as a consumer?
SPEAKER_00I can't identify it because it is not written in the way I can read, it is written in uh in print that I I couldn't read it.
SPEAKER_01I'm going to give you another one. You can hold it, fill it, and then you tell me what it is.
SPEAKER_00I think this one is uh soda because of its bottle, the way its bottle is chip shaped.
SPEAKER_01Why why do you tell that this is soda?
SPEAKER_00Okay, reason being if like you have shaken it like this, it will have something like bubbles, bubbles on.
SPEAKER_01Is there any other writing that you can feel and and you tell me?
SPEAKER_00Uh no. Why because I am unable to read it to read print.
SPEAKER_01So you can put this that one down, okay, then have this one, fill it, and then uh you tell me what it is or what you think it is.
SPEAKER_00Okay, according to my understanding, I think this one is powder.
SPEAKER_01Why do you say it's powder?
SPEAKER_00Because if like you have shaken it like this, it has something like powder powder inside it.
SPEAKER_01Based on my demonstration with Akite, she could not tell these products exactly because the last one I gave her is ground ginger, uh, which is in a 50 gram container, and uh it is certified by UNBS, and it has all the vital information that a consumer should should know, including the expiry dead. The second last item I gave her is actually not soda, it's corner fruit drink, it's grapes and berries flavor. It's in five milliliter bottle, it has other instructions. For example, storing it in a cool, dry place, shaking it well before consumption. Then the first item that I gave her is actually a box of biscuit, but it's not cream or chocolate, like she had said. Without accessible labels, visually impaired consumers must depend entirely on the goodwill of the shopkeepers or good Samaritans, accompanying them to verify products' aspirate debts or safety labels. Akite explained that it is actually easier for her to detect spoiled perishables like tomatoes than to trust pre-packaged consumables. This means some products will remain out of reach for persons like Akite.
SPEAKER_00It is not possible for me now to read. I will just receive the commodity or goods or the product from the shopkeeper and I went with it home. And then I will let someone from home now to read for me if this one it has expired or not. That one is dealing with the products like uh cosmetics and drinks or biscuits and bread. But for the case of foodstuffs, that one I will be able to know. For instance, if I go to the market and I buy and I bought uh tomatoes, or fish, or cabbage, that one I will be able to know simply because the smell will be there. And tomatoes, when it is spoiled, it'll it will now be having what something like fleet fleet and the smell, it will smell badly. So I will get to know that this one is spoiled, that one is thing concerning food stuff.
SPEAKER_01According to 2024 National Population and Housing Census report, 28,843 persons were blind, while 329,489 persons had low vision. Good consumer protection systems are supposed to protect everyone. However, for Francis Okelo Oloya, chairperson of Amoro Disabled Persons Association, consumer protection remains a distant dream. Like Akite, Oloya is visually impaired. One day, he carried an expired mineral water from a shop where there was no assistance for the blind. What happened when you paid for the bottle of water, and why was it hard for you to tell that it had already expired?
SPEAKER_02Most of the consumables that we have on the markets, beverages and other things that we get from supermarkets, they do not have any brain writings for us. We do not know the expiry dates. Even the mirror water that we drink. I remember one time I bought the one and a half liter mirror water, and I had to to detect with my tongue that the test was not the usual test that I used to know. And I had to ask someone to check on the expiry date and we realized it had already expired by two months. So we then need to test with our tongue to find out that something is spoiled, which is already a dangerous thing for us. So personally, I feel we are not safe until we rely on people who have sight. We are not safe.
SPEAKER_01Olaya says these cases are common among his peers who live in difficulty to appeal this misdeed.
SPEAKER_02People with visual impairment definitely face this challenge, especially now when when they're even going to buy. You find this bread uh sold uh on the market, and my colleagues would just buy and they consume. The only way for you to know is the test, but you don't see the writings. So it is a common thing. The fact that I I personally got it, it is also the same condition with my colleagues. They are not exceptional to these conditions. It is a general problem for all of us.
SPEAKER_01Although I notes a frustrating irony, while tech companies provide user-friendly, accessible applications for gadgets, manufacturers of prepackaged consumables have failed to emulate this.
SPEAKER_02People only think about the money that we give. It is easy to receive the money, but you don't care about the person receiving the good. Is he also satisfied? Is he feeling good about the products that you are selling them? So normally people who sell goods only think about the money they are receiving, but they don't think about the welfare of the buyer who, in our case, are also personal visual impairment. We are in a modern world, unlike those days. Like the phones, sometimes they have voice screen readers and some computers that have software like JOS that we can use and be able to communicate. But the biggest problem is now on consumables, things that people eat that can also pose our lives at a risk.
SPEAKER_01Lack of accessibility contradicts both national and international law. The Persons with Disabilities Act of 2020 in Uganda prohibits the discrimination in the provision of services and guarantees access to information. Also, Uganda is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which mandates accessibility to information, communication, and public services. When information designed to protect everyone is inaccessible, can the system truly serve all citizens? For Akite, it means shopping with trust rather than knowledge. In our next part, we will hear from experts and advocates on why this gap exists and how it can be bridged. For New Vision podcasts, I am Jesse Johnson James.