THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: An official branch of Book Share, the online library of the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY), a type of digital talking books for the blind, was opened in the city on Friday.Over 24,000 books are available online for the blind in Kerala through ‘Chakshumathi,’ a charitable organisation working to empower the blind, which organised a workshop ‘Reading without Seeing’ on DAISY. The first Malayalam DAISY book was also launched on the occasion. P P Mukundan released ‘Ananthamaya Sneham’, authored by Swami Sukhabodhananda.The day-long workshop demonstrated the importance of having a uniform book publishing method that could save time in producing print book, Braille books, e-books and audio books. Dipender Manocha, president, Daisy Forum, India, said that DAISY technology would go a long way in empowering blind people.‘’Now the technology has come to a level affordable for anyone and everyone. Having a fancy, costly device for reading or using an affordable smart device is a decision that has to be taken by the reader. But most of the blind readers are from middle or lower economic sections of the society,’’ he said.Kerala University Vice-Chancellor A Jayakrishnan inaugurated the workshop. He said that Chakshumathi’s initiative will benefit not just the blind and visually-challenged, but also a large number of other disabled sections who have limitations in reading prints. Prof V K Damodaran, chairman, Chakshumathi, said the organisation aimed to help blind people to become self-confident.
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