Translating the death registration form into plain English

 

I worked on the death registration form as a volunteer for Zen Citizen. I'd have liked to use some screenshots but the login is very buggy and I could not get into the Seva Sindhu portal once I completed the project. So, here’re some text-only highlights: 

Preferred language: This is a field at the beginning of the form. At first, it seems like an innocent enough query. But look at it more deeply and it can unhinge the entire form. By preferred language, what is the government asking? Is it the preferred language in which I want to fill the form? Or, is it the preferred language in which I want the Death Registration certificate to be provided? 

I selected English and proceeded to the subsequent fields. However, the language preference continued to haunt me. Further below in the form, it asks for the deceased’s name in Kannada. This on an English form. What happens if I am not a Kannada-speaking person? Of course, you can always use transliterating tools to input the name in Kannada, but how do I verify if it’s a correct reproduction of my name? 

The converse is even more problematic: that is, being asked to type the name in English when I have chosen Kannada as my language for the form. In English, one’s name can be spelled in so many ways. How do you verify if it’s correct if you don’t know English? This can result in a critical failure because if the certificate spells your name wrong, it’s a dud. None of the government agencies will accept it and getting it corrected is a lifetime’s work. 

Ration card: The form assumes everyone has a ration card! How did this come to be? If you don’t have a ration card, you cannot even begin with the form as the name of the deceased is automatically populated from the ration card. 

Date & time of death: The time selection menu progresses by the minute. This can be very tedious to navigate to the exact hour and minute. Providing a time selection menu like we use to set alarms in mobile phones shouldn’t be too difficult. The other question is why the time of death is relevant, unless we are investigating homicide. 

We also looked at the necessity of some of the data being collected – like the age of the deceased’s spouse. We are waiting to hear from Seva Sindhu on this and other queries. 

My learnings from this project as of now

• The form is not designed from the user’s perspective. It seems to primarily solve things for the government agency rather than the citizen.  
• It works on many assumptions -- that someone typing in English also knows how to type their name in Kannada; that everyone has a ration card; that if they cannot figure out something, they can always avail the services of a broker. 
• The form does not seem to be tested with users. Else, some of the things I highlighted here may have caught the eye of the form creators. 
• The form does not seem to take into cognizance the varied background of the users. Given that it’s a death registration form, it is applicable to everyone (!) and hence must be usable by everyone. 

The lacunae of this form are not unique to it. God knows, there are worse government forms out there. It is representative though and makes for a good beginning. Hope to be able to report positively on this project in the days to come.