Kick-off Seminar: Thousand books for the Blind Movement

FES Indonesia together with the Ministry of Human Development and Culture (Kemenko PMK), the Association for visual impaired and blind people Mitra Netra and the Software Company IBM organized a kick-off Seminar on: “Thousand books for the Blind Movement” (Gerakan Seribu Buku untuk Tuna Netra) on the 17th of May 2016 in Kemenko PMK in Jakarta.

The event was opened by PMK Vice-Minister Achmad Tubagus Chusni and attended by representatives of PMK and other relevant Ministries as well as NGO representatives and volunteers. These volunteers subsequently started to transcribe books with IBM software into Braile language.

Only a tiny proportion of published books worldwide are so far available in braille.
The World blind Association estimates that of all published books only less than five percent are available in formats readable to visual impaired people. That means consequently that the access to information for visually impaired and blind people worldwide is still clearly limited. Against this background this joint project on transcribing books into braille is considered to be a small contribution for better access to information and therefore for enhanced inclusion of persons with visual impairment in Indonesia.