What one man is teaching Singaporeans about living with the visually impaired – a crossing, a tour, a firm ‘no’ at a time
Mr Chong Kwek Bin has spent years teaching people with disabilities to use technology and reshaping how Singapore treats its visually impaired – from pushing for 24-hour "locating signals" at pedestrian crossings to being a panellist at a United Nations conference.
Mr Chong Kwek Bin, 44, is the manager of an accessibility and assistive technology team at SG Enable, the focal agency for disability in Singapore. (Photo: ²ÝÝ®´«Ã½/Alyssa Tan)
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Every day, all around the world, pedestrians look out for the green man – the ubiquitous icon atop traffic poles that lets us know it is safe to cross the road.
In Singapore, the figure's appearance is sometimes accompanied by loud, rapid beeps emanating from the traffic pole, followed by a pulsing tone. Less obvious are the soft, staggered beeps that go off even when the man is red.
My ears have subconsciously picked up these audio cues for decades. My mind, however, had never given them much thought.
Earlier this week, I found myself standing at a crossing by Redhill MRT station listening to these beeps – attentively this time – as Mr Chong Kwek Bin explained that the softer beeps are a "locating signal".
"Without it, totally blind people will not know where the traffic pole (is)."
Mr Chong is visually impaired. Three days a week, the 44-year-old uses this very pedestrian crossing to get to his office at the Enabling Village along Lengkok Bahru in Redhill.
He is the manager of the accessibility and assistive technology team at the innovation division of SG Enable, the national agency that seeks to help people with disabilities to live and work in an inclusive society.
On Tuesday (Apr 14), we were making our way along a sheltered walkway close to his workplace when several people breezed past with their eyes glued to their mobile phones.
"Sometimes, there's a bit of irony," he said in a deadpan manner while manoeuvring his cane. "As visually impaired persons, we are the ones who must watch out for passers-by.
"Many people who can see don't look at where they're going."
That particular pedestrian crossing in Redhill is, in some ways, Mr Chong's own handiwork.
For years, he had been among those pushing for the Land Transport Authority to keep the locating signals running for 24 hours, rather than switching them off at 9pm daily.
In 2022, the government incorporated these requests into Singapore's Enabling Masterplan 2030, starting with 24-hour audible traffic signals installed at 325 pedestrian crossings across the island.
It is one thread in a career that has also taken Mr Chong to the steering committees of two national disability road maps and, in 2023, to the floor of the United Nations' 16th Conference of States Parties on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
During the conference, held at its United States headquarters in New York, Mr Chong took part as a panellist at a roundtable on digital accessibility.
In our 10-minute walk from the MRT station, Mr Chong had already noted and explained, in full, why sheltered walkways in Singapore make it harder for the visually impaired to navigate.
And as soon as we set foot into the newly revamped Enabling Village, he pointed out a striking neon blue feature on the ground – a navigation guide for the visually impaired that he also had a role in instating.
"You can see a stark colour contrast, and if I sweep my cane around, there's a difference in texture, too. There's always something tactile you can feel with your cane to recognise the pathway."
As visually impaired persons, we are the ones who must watch out for passers-by. Many people who can see don't look at where they're going.
It's a small win, but much more needs to be done still. By Mr Chong's reckoning, "practically 90 per cent" of Singapore is still inaccessible for visually impaired people in terms of navigation.
"But if more places are willing to consider (rolling out solutions like) this, it's better than nothing. We can hopefully, slowly, edge towards full inclusion."
Yet for all his advocacy and ambition today, Mr Chong was not always someone who set out to change the world.
ADJUSTING PERSPECTIVE, FINDING STRENGTH
Picture your current field of vision but as a jigsaw puzzle, with pieces taken off randomly all over the place.
Then put a poor, tacky colour filter over it, so that most colours look much darker and more similar to each other. Now try to zoom out, like you're activating your phone camera's 0.5x wide-angle lens.
That is how Mr Chong describes what he sees on a daily basis – but his vision was not always like that.
As a nine-year-old boy in 1990, he first felt something was amiss while sitting in the spacious school hall of Opera Estate Primary School, watching his schoolmates put on a National Day concert.
The only problem was that he couldn't see a thing on stage. He called his parents and was swiftly taken to the doctor.
"The doctor never tells the kid anything," he joked, but he recalled a grim look on his parents' face.
He was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder that causes the retina's rod and cone cells to break down slowly, resulting in progressive vision loss.
His mother had a brother and a nephew who both had the same condition.
Doctors concluded that it was an X-linked gene (located on the X chromosome), which means that the gene was carried and passed on to him by his mother.
Although Mr Chong did not know the condition's name at the time, he immediately understood he would be dealing with it for the rest of his life.
"I vaguely remember feeling very troubled, very low for a while," he recalled. However, for a child who had just been delivered terrible news, he got over it remarkably quickly, he said.
"My vision loss was still not too significant and I could still read, study and walk around in the dark.
"Also, I had the strength of being a good student. Being good at my studies assured me that, 'Oh, the world hasn't collapsed'."
LARGE PRINT, LARGE SCORES
Due to his condition, his test papers in school were larger than the rest – printed on A3 sheets with each letter about 1cm tall. He was escorted to a different room away from his schoolmates, sharing the space with only an invigilator.
He was also given about 30 minutes more to complete tests and exams than the other students.
At such a young age, some children might find it upsetting or lonely to be treated so differently from their peers. Not so for Mr Chong.
"I'm a practical person," he said simply. "If you give me extra time, I can do better in my exams, so I was really happy."
He ended up scoring a sterling 289 for his Primary School Leaving Examination, just three points shy of that year's national record high.
I tried to hold back my astounded shriek but clearly I wasn't too successful, seeing as Mr Chong immediately added: "Er, it's a bit dashed by the fact that there was another boy who also got 289 in my school."
His accomplishment drew some attention from the news media, and he found himself approached for interviews. Ironically, it was only after reading his own story in the papers that Mr Chong found out what his disorder was called: retinitis pigmentosa.
He was quoted as saying then: "The secret of my success is support from my family, teachers doing tons of worksheets, and lots and lots of luck."
BORN TO TEACH
Mr Chong attended Dunman High, then went on to study economics and political science at the National University of Singapore. It was only after his university days that his vision began to gradually deteriorate.
Throughout his schooling years though, he always ended up teaching – classmates who needed help with their work would always find their way to him.
So naturally, when the time came to choose a path after graduation, he applied to be an economics teacher with the Ministry of Education.
"I basically breezed through the interview, and the interviewer spoke as if it was a sure thing that I would get the position," he said.
"I was a bit taken aback. I was, like, 'You know that I'm visually impaired, right?' And he said, 'Yes, yes, no problem!'"
However, after going through the medical review, he was rejected. No reason was given, he said. After all these years, he still can't be sure why.
As fate would have it, his career took him down the path of education anyway – albeit not quite the way he'd envisioned it.
As an info-technology trainer at the Singapore Association for the Visually Handicapped, he focused on public education.
This meant helping people with visual disabilities learn to use computers, smartphones and other forms of assistive technology, while teaching the general public how to interact with the visually impaired.
He still does this in his current role at SG Enable, which requires him to guide visitors on a tour around an assistive technology facility called Tech Able, which aims to increase awareness and promote the use of assistive technologies among people with disabilities.
His role also involves putting new assistive and accessibility technology through its paces. He serves as a tester and adviser for developers, designers and entrepreneurs looking to improve the design and use of their products.
Just this week, he was providing the same service to a group of students who had reached out to Tech Able, seeking Mr Chong's input on prototype devices that they had designed to help the visually impaired.
It's plain to see why Mr Chong is the perfect man for this job.
Not only is he a daily user of assistive technology, having years of experience in guiding others to use such aids is helpful in communicating complex nuances to developers and manufacturers.
Lately, he has also been consulting on a new project: A robot guide dog with navigation and interaction systems that help the visually impaired walk around independently, designed by a Singapore company called RoamAssist.
The process is iterative – the company adds a feature, Mr Chong tests it and gives feedback, and they refine the product before returning it to him for another round of testing.
The robot guide dog is scheduled to be available for visually impaired individuals visiting Gardens by the Bay's Flower Dome by the third quarter of this year.
BEHIND THE JOKES, THE FRUSTRATIONS OF LIFE REMAIN
Given Mr Chong's pragmatic nature and dry humour, it was at times tempting to believe that his disability does not affect him at all.
Was he ever bullied at school? "Not as a result of my visual impairment," he said.
Is there a possibility that he might go completely blind one day? "Potentially. I'd probably be a bit annoyed, but it's not going to stop me from doing my work."
Is he conscious about his appearance on camera? "Well, I can't see the camera."
For sure, he does experience unpleasant emotions that feel more than a nuisance, and he's just as forthcoming about these dark clouds as he is about their silver linings.
Many of these less positive experiences come from his interactions with the public.
Once, at a bus stop, a stranger noticed his walking cane and offered to flag the bus for him. He accepted the offer thankfully, but wasn't expecting what came next: When the bus came, Mr Chong found himself forcefully manhandled on board and shoved into a seat.
The next day, Mr Chong met the same stranger, who did the same thing despite his polite protests that it wasn't necessary.
When he saw the man again the day after, he had to physically shrug him off.
"I'm not sorry I did that," Mr Chong said firmly. "(People like that) may be trying to be helpful, but they aren't respecting my wishes.
"Sometimes, I think people who offer help may feel the need to come across as knowing exactly what to do. (But) if you don't know what to do, you could be helping the wrong way."
Other times, the difficulties are nearer and dearer.
At home, he has a companion who understands vision loss too.
His wife, Ms Tan Li Ping, 52, lives with diabetic retinopathy, an eye condition in which blood vessels in the retina are damaged.
They first met when she attended weekly IT classes that Mr Chong taught in 2013. These days, he joked, whatever his wife learned back then has been "returned" to him.
"When you're married, the IT trainer becomes just tech support."
Over the years, Mr Chong's mother Neo Ah Gaim, now 77 years old, had once or twice expressed feeling guilt that she had passed the gene for retinitis pigmentosa on to him, though he never said much in response.
His family, he explained, is simply not one that likes to show emotion. Yet, he makes it clear that he does not blame her for his visual impairment at all.
One of Mr Chong's biggest regrets about losing his vision is losing the pleasure of reading as well.
For years after his initial diagnosis, he could still read. He spent much of his school holidays at home standing by the window where the light was brightest, holding a book close to his face for hours at a stretch.
Now, he estimates that he's able to read with his eyes only at a pace of "one A4 paper an hour".
Even though he listens to professionally narrated audiobooks and makes use of assistive technology to read e-books, the experience of his favourite pastime just isn't the same.
"When you're reading with your eyes, the voice is in your mind. When you have someone else read to you, the mood, the atmosphere – (they become) however the other medium (interprets) it."
JUST LIKE YOU
As our conversation wound down, Mr Chong led me out of his office and to Tech Able's assistive technology showcase, a varied display of all the tech initiatives improving people's lives in Singapore right now.
Working his way smoothly through the displays, he pointed out item after item to me on instinct.
He has done this hundreds of times as part of his job at SG Enable, but the fact that he is the one doing these tours for visitors and guests is strategic.
"I think people love having a blind person lead you around a space and tell you about it," he said.
"Of course, the caveat is I'm not totally blind, but it still wows (people) enough."
Mr Chong believes that when it comes to true inclusivity in Singapore society, people with disabilities need to step up to exercise their own agency.
"Part of the reason why we're still not an inclusive society is because the public doesn't see (us) enough," he said.
"We need to get out and let ourselves be seen until society is 'sick' of us. That's when we progress, because others will realise that people with disabilities really live their lives just like everybody else."
He also quoted a saying oft-heard in the community: "Nothing for us, without us."
"You need people with disabilities to be at the table when there are discussions on initiatives to benefit them," he said.
And as for everyone else, his hope is simple: that the able-bodied recognise not only all the ways that people with disabilities are different, but more importantly, all the ways they are similar.
"We are as nuanced as you are," he said. "Not more complicated – just as complicated. We are just like you."
