News

The Surf's Up - £82,000 for Web Portal - 01 May 2001

Our Managing Editor, Alastair McPhee has dreamt, since the day that he founded the service, that he would one day be able to provide a radio station for the visually impaired. Now with the help of the Voluntary Issues Unit of the Scottish Executive that dream is closer to being achieved, via the Internet.

The delivery of print information in alternative formats for the reading impaired was originally done through Braille or reel-to-reel tape. But technology has moved on. Now one in five homes either has a personal computer, or access to one, and print information can be delivered via emails or web pages. This gives the visually impaired much more control over how they 'read' the information. Some will boost the text size and read or print from their computers, others will use adaptive technologies and have the information read to them.

Our aim is to use the Internet to enable the 88,000 Scots who are visually impaired, the 60 local voluntary-run talking newspaper groups and other organisations for the blind to download or listen in real time to audio versions of national and local newspapers and magazines.

The web site will also provide general information and links on issues that affect audio transcription organisations, particularly those that are not commonly dealt with by other organisations for the blind. It will provide a great opportunity to encourage awareness of our charity amongst the sighted community as well as an opportunity to generate income for the services we offer.

The Internet is a powerful medium for the visually-impaired. It enables us to deliver information in a variety of formats so that our users can choose how to access it. It puts them in control for the first time. We hope to extend our services over time to offer our commercial clients the facility to download the digital information we record for them from part of our site dedicated for their use.

The first tranche of the funds is expected to arrive in May, enabling work on the project to commence shortly after that date. We hope that the completed portal will be in operation by May 2003.