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Report on the Seminar of World Blind Union - Asia Pacific Region & Training programme of Sigtuna DAR 3.0

Written by Hisao Chiba, UN-ESCAP Disability Associate Expert


The Seminar of World Blind Union- Asia Pacific Region was held on September 24 and was followed by the Training programme of DAISY (Sigtuna DAR 3.0) from 25 - 27 September 2001. This is the report of these two programmes.



Seminar on the Effects on Blind People and Organisations Serving the Blind Through
the UN-ESCAP Asia-Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons, 1993-2002

It was held from 9:00 - 12:30, Monday 24 September. UN-ESCAP, Disability Expert, Mr Yutaka Takamine and, Associate Expert, Mr Hisao Chiba (assistant) chaired the seminar. In this seminar, Mr Yutaka Takamine briefly presented activities of ESCAP for people with disabilities. Particularly, ESCAP decade activities for the blind were one of the main points in the presentation. Afterwards, discussion was held with three small groups. Those groups discussed the achievement of the decade targets and figured out what they need more to achieve the targets, which have not yet adequately achieved, in their own country in the view of the blind. The seminar was ended up concluded with presentation of the three groups.

Since most of participants were visually impaired or blind, the presentation was mainly focusing on issues of the blind, although there was some briefing of general ESCAP activities on the disability issues. In the small discussion, each group was assigned to discuss three or four particular targets among 11 targets of the decade, allocated by Mr. Takamine.

In the first group, in which most of participants were Thai national, they discussed the followings: National coordination, Legislation, Information, and Public awareness. According to the discussion, achievement of the targets in Thailand seems quite unsatisfactory. In fact, a dozen of critical opinions were arisen. For instance, there is a law for the blind, but in fact it is unreasonable/unpractical law, which is literally useless, since most of government officials do not know about needs of the blind. The similar phenomenon is taking place in a number of countries.

Even an information system in Thailand is not productive. They said that they need more comprehensive demographic data of people with disabilities, which is really unclear at the moment. Furthermore, the improvement of accessibility to every kind of information is really necessary. They need a talking ATM (Cashing machine) and reading software for computer uses.

In the second groups, which ideally consisted of several nationalities, such as Japan, Australia, Viet Nam, Malaysia, and Cambodia, discussed I) public facilities (rehabilitation services), II) assistive devices and III) self-help organization. They also pointed out what is required to improve social environment for the blind. For example, for public facilities, Braille is available at any place in the public but to find Braille mark is not easy. Further, an audio traffic guide system is very important for travels or even walks for the blind. However, there is no standardization for the system, which ends up confusing the blind.

It was also claimed that most of governments do not provide services of assistive devices for the blind. Actually, it is improved in some developing countries but it is still insufficient. Instead, a number of NGOs are working on the issue.

In the third groups, I) education, II) employment and training, III) prevention of causes of disabilities were discussed. In education, some improvements were pointed out, while its more opportunities were required. In most of countries, an opportunity of education and training for the blind is less than sighted people. Special education for the blind is highly required while inclusive education is also important. Blind students need more opportunities to enrol in university.

The seminar was concluded with presentations of each group, in which above all outcomes were presented. They were noted down and recognized by ESCAP so that they would be included into evaluation of the decade targets.


How member countries can benefit from
the Digital Audio Information System (DAISY) talking book?

The above session was held from 14:30 - 16:30 in the afternoon, presented by Mr. William, Secretary General of DAISY Consortium, and Mr Hiroshi Kawamura, Director, Information Center of Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities. (JSRPD)

They had a presentation on the DAISY talking book. It seemed there was a large expectation on the DAISY talking book from a number of blind participants, probably because most of participants were not satisfied with current accessibility of either talking books or ordinal books. Actually, it was also obvious in a DAIDY exhibition during the weekend that most of visitors had high expectation on the DAISY. In the presentation, Mr Kawamura was mainly presenting a history of the DAISY, a process of how it has been developed, which was encouraging for the participants to understand more background of the DAISY. Assumingly, their impressions were very positive and they could understand the importance of standardization of talking books. Finally, it was expected that DAISY talking books would be promoted by most of participants.


Training Session of Sigtuna DAR 3.0 in Bangkok, 25-27 September 2001

Three-day intensive training of newly released software, Sigtuna DAR 3.0, for the blind was held. Most of participants were visually impaired or blind people but familiar with PC operation with JAWS (screen reader). They used JAWS to operate both Windows and Sigtuna. With the assistant of JAWS, all trainees completed the training and received a certification of the course.

11 trainees in the course came from a variety of countries in the Asia and Pacific region, such as Fiji, Australia, Cambodia, India, and Thailand. Apart from one participant from Thailand, the rest were blind or visually impaired.

Trainers were Mr Markus Gylling (DAISY consortium) and Ms Azuma (JSRPD). Before the training, there was a small anxiety whether all of visually impaired trainees, could catch up all of training courses with the same pace of sighted people. Beside, it was first time for the trainers to teach 10 blind trainees at once. However, whole training sessions went through very successfully and everyone in the class could catch up most of the course. It is probably because all trainees had sufficient skills of JAWS and knowledge of PC control and more importantly they were very much keen to learn the DAISY. (Sigtuna DAR)

After the training, all trainees have received a certification of the course and a licence of the Sigtuna DAR software so that they will be able to further train themselves and more importantly, able to promote DAISY compliant products in their hometown.



Last undate 2001/11/29