The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has launched the charity’s first interactive video chat experience, #BeforeYouAsk.

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. It has been developed in partnership with Wavemaker UK and Voxly Digital.

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 a Google predictive search form. The answers are provided in video form by the campaign’s blind and visually-impaired cast.

“RNIB’s #BeforeYouAsk campaign uses humour and familiar scenarios to make people think,” said Martin Wingfield, Director of Brand, at RNIB. “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.”

Following the campaign, it will live on as part of RNIB’s educational toolkit here.