Programme name: Social integration programme by the Ministry of Labour and Social Care, the Department for Support to the Disabled
Financier: Ministry of Labour and Social Care
Project duration: 2006 – 2007
Project partners:
- The Association of the visually impaired of Serbia
- Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad
- AlfaNum, Novi Sad
Summary: Computers and speech software have become an important tool for the visually impaired, because speech software can now convert each text in Serbian into speech. The Audio library for the visually impaired (ABSS) is based on anReader, Serbian text-to-speech synthesizer. ABSS is a simple solution for the visually impaired. It allows them to search the whole library using various criteria (title, author, year of publication, place of publication, keywords, etc.). The library is easily extendable (with permission from the copyright holder), and one book can be simultaneously accessed by multiple users. Books are automatically converted into synthesized speech and as such can be burned onto CDs, to be listened to on regular CD players. Within this project ABSS was installed within the library system of The Association of the Visually Impaired of Serbia, and client applications, providing access to the ABSS over the Internet, were distributed to all members of the Association.
