Rehabilitation for The Visually Impaired in Taiwan

Out Of Darkness-- Catherine's story

Catherine (pseudonym) suffered from detached retina caused by diabetic retinopathy, and she lost her vision within just seven months.  Furthermore, she lost her life purpose as well as her job as a reservation manager of a famous hotel in Taiwan.  She felt depressed, upset and uncertain.  After years of isolation, Catherine attended the computer training class hold by Taiwan Digital Talking Books Association (TDTB).  In this class, she learned to use the computer by a kind of software called screen reader.  With the help of screen reader, Catherine can surf the internet once again, and she regained her self-esteem.  After she graduated from the computer class, she entered TDTB as a member of promotion group.  In TDTB, Catherine became a person who helped others instead of being helped.  She started to help more and more visually impaired, and saw her own value during the process of helping others.

Recording of Daisy Books

From Dec. to Feb., TDTB have finished four more books.  And there are five books are under recording now.  The topics of these books include Health, Education, Novel, Life philosophy, Children Book, and so on.  Visually impaired people can download our daisy books on the platform: http://www.tdtb.org/daisybooks/  We believe our books can give the visually impaired more information and recreation.

Computer Training Courses

 With your support, we have accomplished over 228 hours of computer training course, and there were over 15 visually impaired learning the courses.

Our computer courses include introduction of screen reader (NVDA), computer basics, blogs and surfing the internet, E-mail basics, Facebook, operation of windows, MS word and Youtube.

  We also provide psychological support.  Our social workers will talk to the visually impaired one by one and know their needs.  Also we help the visually impaired purchase the Assistive Devices like magnifier, electronic book player (Plextalk) and etc. 

Outdoor activity

We also hold an outdoor activity for the visually impaired.  We went to Beitou, a famous hot spring resort in Taiwan.  We went hiking to a small hill and went to the hot spring museum.  The visually impaired do not go out very often  because of their vision loss.  With this trip, the visually impaired can relax their mind to hug the mother nature. 

 Recording of Digital Talking Books

In December, we finished recording ten books including 2015: Now these ten books are under editing process, and we will give these books to the visually impaired as soon as possible.  And we also finished a book called, and the topic of this book is health and Chinese massage.  In the future we will continue recruiting volunteers and recording daisy digital talking books.

 Computer Training Courses

With your support, we have accomplished over 360 hours of computer training course, and there were over 32 visually impaired learning the courses.  Our computer courses include introduction of screen reader (NVDA), computer basics, blogs and surfing the internet, E-mail basics, Facebook, operation of windows, MS word and Youtube.

  We also provide psychological support.  Our social workers will talk to the visually impaired one by one and know their needs.  Also we help the visually impaired purchase the Assistive Devices like magnifier, electronic book player (Plextalk) and etc. 

Distribution of free USB flash disks with NVDA and Chinese language synthesizer (MTTS)

With your help, we offer 131 free thumb disks with screen reader software installed thereon.  With free screen reader (NVDA) and speech synthesizer, the visually impaired can operate computer easily and learn more skills and information through the internet.

We are greatly thankful to all donors, and we will continue our work and do our best to help the visually impaired in Taiwan!