Rehabilitation for The Visually Impaired in Taiwan

Recording and Production of Digital Talking Books

From May to August, we continued recording books in DAISY format.  Two books are finished and one book is under recording.  All books are produced in DAISY format and will be given to visually impaired people for free.  And in our website, there is a section called “DAISY Library”.  Every month, we produce about 80~90 e-books in DAISY format and put them on the website.  This library has over 350 members and over 3400 DAISY books till now (2014 August.)  All DAISY books are free to visually impaired people.  With your financial support, we can continually record more audio books and produce e-books in DAISY format.  In modern time, 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 web broadcasting programs are made especially for visually impaired people, and we will teach them how to read these books with free classes.  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 useful topics of English learning, Health, Travelling, Book reviews and Interviews.  In the future, we will continue recruiting volunteers to record daisy digital talking books and touching articles.  The section of good article is called “Garden of Heart” on our website.  There will be more articles and radio programs if TDTB raise more funds. 

Computer Training Courses

With your support, we have held as many computer courses as we can.  This year, we have focused on three kinds of classes: the NVDA classes (about how to use screen reader “NVDA”), the writing classes (for visually impaired and dyslexic students to learn how to write an article), and the classes for teachers and parents (how to aid visually impaired students).  Besides, we have one to one classes for those have particular needs.  The content of class includes basic computer information, keyboard lessons, iPhone and Android (most popular topic!), music editing software (such as Goldwave, My studio PC), Microsoft Office (WORD, PowerPoint) and Youtube (search and download), blogs and surfing the internet.  Our computer teachers are visually impaired people.  They learned from our vocational training course for months; and when they finished this course, they are capable of teaching other visually impaired people.  In 2013, there were 105 people use the project to learn more than 2000 hours of free computer classes.  We also planned new classes in the future such as literature classes.  If we have enough funds, we can hold more and more new classes.

The Walking Library: DAISY player

The DAISY player is as big as the cellphone, but it’s the most convenient tool to gain information for the visually impaired.  Visually students can use it to read all kinds of digital files.  In this way, we don’t need to spend a lot of money producing braille books.  If visually impaired people joined our DAISY library for free, they can download over 3000 DAISY books into the players.  It is like they bring walking libraries with them, wherever they go, they can read books by hearing.  DAISY players have another useful function: recording voices.  You can use it to record class, notes, natural sounds or anything else.  As for the music, you can save all your mp3 into the DAISY player, making it into a music player.  However, some visually impaired people cannot afford the price, so TDTB borrow DAISY players to visually impaired people and dyslexic people.  And we held classes to teach them how to use the DAISY player.  With this tool, visually impaired people can enjoy their lives more digitally and full of information and recreation. 

Links:

• homepage of TDTB