CRI听力:Phoneline-based Audio Book Service for Blind Readers

Public services to the vision-impaired community have been limited in China but developed fast in recent years. The China Braille Library was established only some twenty years ago.

However, the library now has an Assistive Technology Institute of its own that has been making endeavors to tap the potential in providing services to the vision-impaired.

 

Tang Lizhen, Director of Assistive Technology Institute of China Braille Library, speaks at a recent forum on Friday, May 24, 2013 during the 16th China International High-tech Expo that closed on Sunday. 

 

Tang Lizhen is the director of the library. She says the library may have served its purposes over the past decades though, but just one library like that is obviously far from enough to meet the needs of the more than 10-million blind people in China. So they turned to computer technologies.

 

"Books in Braille used to be the only source available for blind readers. However, the production cost of Braille books is very high and the printing process takes quite a long time. Thus the products fall far short of the huge demand that also includes works of literature in addition to the regular basic education books. With computers, they can download the special versions of books or to read online -- similar to what normal people do."

At a recent forum during the 16th China International High-tech Expo that closed on Sunday, Tang briefed the media and visitors on how her library has been developing computerized E-book services for the blind over the past two years.

And one of the latest they plan to introduce is the audio book service that can be accessed by phone from anywhere in the country.

 

"We plan to cooperate with telecommunication companies to develop telephone-based audio reading services that hopefully will cover most of the resources available in our library. You just dial the number to pick up what you want by following the instructions. For instance, press one for classic story-telling and press two for entertaining pieces such as cross talks."

In Tang's opinion, the goal of making appliances informatively "speak" could be easily achieved by high-tech means. Take a refrigerator as an example. If the door remains open, it will sound an alarm that turns off when the door is shut.

However, Tang said with disappointment that designers have no idea about the needs of people with disabilities, so they fail to create products that also serve blind users. Here, she quoted the founder of the China Disabled Persons' Federation in explaining the situation. Meanwhile, she expects that the Smart City Forum could help arouse interest in the problem, particularly among experts and designers.

 

"I want to quote Deng Pufang: 'If uninformed people don't know how to help, I think as soon as they do learn about needs of people with disabilities, that experts, designers and engineers who join the Smart City Forum will take them into account when they make new devices.' This way, the blind people will enjoy a better life."

 

For CRI, I'm Wei Tong.