Reflecting on darkness- Ishiyetaa Saxena

After a full week of orientation and brainstorming, we were finally given a list of projects to choose from. All of them seemed pretty attractive! But there was one module which caught my eye. The moment I read the first project that it was offering, I knew that it was the one I’d love to work on. The one thing that might help me change lives. And who doesn't love bringing about a change?

The module was called : 'Space and Place'. The first project it was offering was ‘Dark and Light’. It said- Engage with “Blind Children” and designing for their educational needs in terms of designing tools and toys. And that sentence was enough to make me want to take it up.During our first class, we discussed about how ‘dark’ is a positive concept.. Without the presence of dark, there would be no value for light. And what is light? The absence of darkness. Via this discussion, we entered the sympathy zone towards the blind And to understand them better, we walked in a straight corridor, blindfolded. And trust me, after 2 minutes I was so restless and tempted to open my eyes. I imagined how a blind person would undergo a similar feeling but will not be able to do anything about it. It’s true when they say that you cannot understand a person completely without stepping into their shoes. We discussed the problems we thought they’d face and researched a lot over their conditions and lives. And that’s when my thought process first began.

Our first assignment was to design a personal visiting card which would work well for both the visually paired and impaired. I researched a lot on braille. It seemed like a code I couldn’t decipher without a translator! There were dots, dots and more dots. I came up with a rectangular flip card which was colourful and brailed on the normal English alphabets. That way one could lessen the gap between the visually paired and unpaired as both would get the same cards. My card read- ‘Srishti student, Ishiyetaa Saxena. Nice to meet you’

The second assignment was to design a shirt in a way that the blind person could easily wear it and even know it’s print. I used a tag concept in which a prototype of the main cloth would be made and hung as the tag so that the blind person knows what he’s wearing and also, the main tshirt print would be in normal English but the prototype would have the same message in braille. This way a visually impaired person could wear normal clothes and still be fully aware of what he has put on. The factors that were taken into consideration were fabric, comfort, age and criteria. Also the clothes should be comfortable and socially acceptable. I used a Velcro strip behind the buttons so that the shirt could be worn and removed easily. On the tag I used a colour code in braille.

One of the prototype sample of a tag that should be attached to the tshirt or just felt otherwise to make a choice. It is the mini version of the main shirt with all the features. Also it has a small hanging tag in Braille of the first and last letter of the color of the shirt.

The shirt I made had a veclro line running along on the behind of the button side so that  the shirt could be opened and closed conveniently. On the back side I stitched a tag with 'Blazer' written on it in English (as a brand name) The prototype tag had the same thing written but in Braille. This would help to reduce the gap between the paired and impaired.

The third assignment involved getting out into the city and understanding what problems a blind person would face while traveling. This was a group project. We decided to go down to MG Road Metro station via bus. We created a rough questionnaire to understand how people thought about the blind. Every person we spoke to, had a story to tell. We interviewed locals who were traveling by bus, the bus conductor and driver, random people walking on the street, people eating at MCdonalds. We realized that people were very sympathetic towards the blind. I thought of it as a positive thing because they’d always receive enough help but the backdrop being that unnceccesary help could lead to a higher dependency level. The major turning point was when we discovered that blind people weren’t allowed to use the metro. On our way back, we met a blind couple in the bus. Both were professors at the University. They stated how people behaved with them and sometimes the autowallas demanded unreasonable fares. We jotted down all the pros and cons of public transportation, we being empathetically towards the blind. We then researched about the right and privileges a blind person gets in India and abroad, but focussing mainly on Bangalore. We then showcased a powerpoint on the same.

They say that change starts from within. So our fourth task was to make the Srishti N3 building blind free. We were broken up into groups and we moved around noticing and trying to understand the place like a visually impaired. I joined the signage group. Signages were needed to help the blind travel across the campus independently. Also, my friend Pooja and I, voluntarily made a short film along with our group to spread awareness on the views of the blind. Our concept was basically to help people get over the things they sympathetically did for the visually impaired, but ended up making the latter feel awkward and weird. We named it ‘Behind the seen’ as a pun over the word seen (scene). Since we are new to the movie softwares, we seem to be taking a bit lot of time to experiment, learn and edit it. We went in for a short film mainly because we already had a few posters and paper arts coming in, but none digital. And when a visual runs about, people tend to remember it the most. We researched, spoke to people and saw many interviews and documentaries on the blind to get a brief understanding of what they love, hate, undergo, feel and want. And we’ve tried to portray most of it in our short film.

This entire project taught me how to step into someone else’s shoes and see the world the way they do. Moreover, I was filled with gratitude over the life I live. I realized how we crib over wanting aviators or retro glasses but in that process we forget to feel grateful over the fact that we have a perfectly running body. Encountering all the difficulties, I am inspired over the positivity blind people hold. I realized how most of them are smarter than the visually capable. They notice things that we fail to see even with our open eyes. For the exhibition, I’d want to come up with ways to enhance education via audio and touch. It was noted that children stop learning maths after class 7 because there are no provisions for geometry in braille. I’d love to work on that. And I hope that we all really are able to make  a difference.

My posters-

I restricted myself to textual posters because I wanted to write taglines that would make an impact on  the reader's mind and would also be easy to remember. So I came up with the above four.