A new bill is making it easier for the blind community to vote in Oklahoma.Early voting starts on Thursday and for some, the task isn’t always simple. House Bill 1711 was recently signed into law.KOCO 5 spoke with the authors of the bill, who said it’s important to make sure the blind community has a say in elections."People with disabilities still want to have dignity and pride," said Sen. Paul Rosino, (R) Oklahoma City.Every vote matters in elections. For the blind community, voting has its challenges."They have to have somebody else with them when they go to vote, so somebody else has to read their ballot or somebody else has to walk them through it," Rosino said.Rosino and Rep. Brian Hill authored the bill. They said it will make voting easier."This bill gave them the dignity to vote privately and do it from their own home and have the opportunity like everyone else does," Rosino said.The blind community can now request an absentee ballot and it goes straight to their computer."And most people with visual impairments, they have screen readers, so the screen will read that ballot and they can market themselves and then they have to print it off and return it," Rosino said.It’ll take a year before this new process is available."We have to do an RFP. we have to do a request for proposal and we have to get the software, then we will have to test it," Rosino said.It becomes effective July 1, 2023.