Rehabilitation for The Visually Impaired in Taiwan

Recording of Digital Talking Books
From July to Sep., we finished recording two books and twelve web broadcasting programs.  All books and broadcasting programs are produced in DAISY format.  DAISY format is the best way to read and the best way to publish for the visually impaired (According to the DAISY consortium).  These books and broadcasting programs are made especially for visually impaired people, and we will give these books to the visually impaired for free when they make an order.  We also put our web broadcasting programs on TDTB’s website.  The website of web radio programs is: http://www.tdtb.org/information_2.aspx. The broadcasting programs are about topics of Health, Travelling, Book reviews and Interviews.  In the future, we will continue recruiting volunteers and recording daisy digital talking books and aritcles.

Enlarging the DAISY Library continually. 
This Online library is constructed in 2010, and visually impaired people could join to be a membership from that time.  This library has 250 members and 2,900 DAISY books till now.  Next year, the rotary club of Tienmu will cooperate with TDTB to enlarge the scale of DAISY Library.  The model of Taiwan DAISY library mainly referred to a famous organization called Bookshare.org in USA.  From 2007, Bookshare.org acquired a subsidy about 32 million dollars from the Special Section of Education Department of U.S.A. in five years.  With enormous fund, Bookshare.org had more than 120,000 books and 150,000 members in 2011. 
TDTB tried to build a DAISY library from the successful experience of Bookshare.org.  TDTB not only provides DAISY books but also provides computer training courses, which make this library accessible for visually impaired people.  This year, TDTB will cooperate with Rotarians to expand DAISY library.  TDTB will continue to make DAISY books and recruit members.  We will especially focus on visually impaired students.  We will try hard to improve their reading ability and computer ability.  With your help, TDTB will continually make good DAISY books for the visually impaired.

Computer Courses
With your support, we have held many kinds of computer courses.  We have hold the group class (internet, facebook), and the music editing group class.  Other computer courses include introduction of software--screen reader (NVDA), basic computer information, music editing software (such as Goldwave, My studio PC), Microsoft Office and Youtube, blogs and surfing the internet, E-mail, operation of windows.  We also planned a new class for the visually impaired.  That is photography class for the visually impaired children.  If we have enough funds, we can hold the new class.
  In Sundays, we hold a seminar called “life experience sharing.”  The seminars will continue to hold until December.  We invited many visually impaired people to share their valuable life experiences.  Topics of sharing are abundant, range from investing, exercising, traveling to learning English.  TDTB also provide psychological counseling services.  Our social workers will talk to the visually impaired one by one and know their needs.  Also we hire professional counselors to help the visually impaired.   

Links:

• official site of TDTB