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: June 2005 – February 2006
Project partners:
- The Association for the protection of rights of the children of Belgrade
- School for the visually impaired “Veljko Ramadanović”
- Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad
- AlfaNum, Novi Sad
Summary: The visually impaired have problems in education, because all the literature available in Braille and audio format does not meet their needs. Reading newspapers and other written texts requires assistance from others. Consequently, so far there have been only a small number of educated visually impaired persons. Without the possibility for normal education the visually impaired have difficulties in finding a job. Audio libraries such as ABSS allow easier and more independent education of the visually impaired, thus helping them to overcome these problems. The ABSS architecture enables the creation of a large database of textbooks, other books, journals, and other information in text format. Such a database can be inexpensively archived on a hard disc and easily extended with new content. Using anReader it can be transformed into intelligible and natural-sounding synthesised speech. During the project ABSS was installed in the School for the visually impaired “Veljko Ramadanović”. The pupils can access the library both from the computers at school and at their homes.
