October 12, 2025 was a special day for Michel Fozeu, a visually impaired resident of the Mimboman neighborhood in Yaounde IV subdivision. For the first time ever, he was able to read ballot papers and cast a vote for his preferred presidential candidate without anyone reading the ballot papers to him or telling him their colors. This was thanks to the introduction of braille ballot papers by the election organising body, ELECAM.
“The envelope was handed to me with 12 ballot papers and then I was taken to the polling booth. The ballot papers each contained the name and party of the candidate written on the paper in Braille… As compared to previous years, I can say things have improved because previously for voting, visually impaired persons could not make their choice alone or even if they did they could not be sure that their choice was respected by the people assisting them cause there were no Braille ballot papers,” he explains.
Less than a month before the election, the election management body ELECAM announced that it would introduce a tactile voting jacket for visually impaired citizens to enhance inclusivity and accessibility. Speaking to the media on September 17, 2025, Erik Essousse, the Director-General of Elections, said while ELECAM had previously provided braille documents for the visually impaired, it was necessary to take it a notch higher and provide a means for all visually impaired voters, regardless of their braille literacy, to exercise their right to vote.
But Kesah Princely, lecturer of International Relations and Conflict Studies at the University of Buea and managing editor of Disability News Africa, says the attempt fell short of the much trumpeted success promised to persons with disabilities (PWDs). Even at the pilot centres where this was to go operational, PWDs still had a hard time using them.
“Even those with the jackets they said were in these pilot centres, ELECAM officials were not sensitised on how to use them. Some persons with visual impairment were not sensitised on how to use them. Someone asked at Lycee Molyko, which is a pilot centre, and they were not provided with. Asked for Braille ballots, and they were not provided,” he quipped.
As bad as it was, Kesah holds that the situation was worse for voters with mobility and hearing impairments. “We have persons with mobility impairment, wheelchair users to be specific, who were not able to participate meaningfully because of the inaccessible nature of the buildings and how the ballot boxes were placed. Some were obliged to be carried on others’ backs to access polling units and cast their votes.”
“Your spirit is already dampened in that kind of atmosphere, and these barriers were quite enormous.”
Jean Pierre Fopa, who lives with a mobility impairment, shares the same perspective. Speaking to Disability News Africa, he described the voting process as undignified, given the polling station’s inaccessibility: “I had to trouble other electors to carry me upstairs just so I could vote.”
Michel, shared a similar fate. Despite having a relatively easy voting due to the availability of braille ballots, he says gaining access to his polling centre and finding his name on the register still required a lot of support. While Michel and Jean Pierre were catered for, thousands of other persons with disabilities were still not, exposing the long-term cracks in Cameroon’s inclusion of persons with disabilities in daily affairs.
From mental disability to speech impairment and more, activists highlight persons with disabilities as greatly sidelined from these processes meant to determine their futures and those of millions of other Cameroonians.
Exclusion: business as usual
Research places disability prevalence among adults in Cameroon at about 9.8% in some urban samples, implying hundreds of thousands of adults with disabilities who could be eligible to vote but are not registered or not counted as such. While an estimated 3.48 million Cameroonians live with disabilities, only 33,985 were registered as voters with disabilities as of December 2024, a striking disparity that raises questions about accessibility, registration, and inclusion of persons with disabilities in the electoral process.
“Of this figure, we are not sure if up to 2,000 actually participated,” lecturer Kesah Princely noted, attributing the circumstance to systemic issues and neglect: “Those from the North West and South West regions have very peculiar challenges. Both security challenges and systemic issues preclude their participation in the voting exercise.”
With a separatist-imposed lockdown in the English-speaking regions of the country, the situation was more precarious for persons with disabilities who would have wanted to vote. Their inability to comfortably participate in the election adds to a myriad of challenges they have and continue to face since the conflict escalated into an armed conflict nearly ten years ago.
Between 2016 and 2019, Human Rights Watch said it had documented at least 20 cases in which people with disabilities lost their lives in the conflict regions as they struggled to flee attacks or because they were left behind. It also revealed that only about 20% of surviving persons with disabilities had received humanitarian assistance.
A deserved Oliver Twist moment
Cameroon’s journey toward the recognition and inclusion of persons with disabilities (PWDs) in everyday processes and activities has been gradual and often uneven. A key step came with Law No. 2010/002 of April 13, 2010, which laid down the protection and promotion of the rights of persons with disabilities, guaranteeing access to education, employment, health care, and participation in public life, including political processes.
In the years that followed, the Ministry of Social Affairs (MINAS) developed a framework to operationalise the law, introducing disability cards and tax incentives for inclusive employers. Cameroon also ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2013, reinforcing its international commitment to equality and accessibility.
Despite these milestones, implementation has lagged behind. Public buildings, transport systems, and even polling stations remain largely inaccessible and non disability friendly. Promised measures like Braille ballots and sign-language interpreters are rarely provided in practice.
Michel sees the just ended election as a pointer to the need for more: “we call on Elecam to work clearly with civil society actors, organisations of people with disabilities to improve the accessibility of voting for the vulnerable population.”
His cry is echoed by disability advocate, Fanny Doh who on election day, took to social media to question how persons with disabilities would overcome the challenges to cast their ballots.
To Kesah, ideal respect for and inclusion of persons with disabilities in Cameroon necessitates going beyond policies to effective and seamless implementation. The point of satisfaction, he insists, “is when we can walk into a polling station and cast a vote seamlessly like any other person, without having to be carried on the back or to get some other person to slot in your ballot”
“When some other person does it, how are you sure that your choice is respected, especially when there have been reports of a lot of rigging? Imagine going to vote for one person but end up voting for someone else…”
By Giyo Ndzi & Chi Emeh*
This article was first published in The Guardian Post newspaper, Issue No. 3603 (23/10/2025)