Unlocking the power of books for people with disabilities.

Mohamed Sobhi has been struggling to get into books for most of his life. Unable to read normal size text because of his low vision – a bilateral impairment that cannot be corrected by lenses, therapy or medical/surgical interventions – he started out by using photocopiers to enlarge the text, a time-consuming process that also generated reams of paper. When scanners came along he dispensed with copying and simply displayed an enlarged view of the text on his monitor. But as he progressed through college, Sobhi, now 28, and a resident of Alexandria, Egypt, found that his options were narrowing again. “I had to revert more and more to the library shelves for reference materials, some of which could not be borrowed, and copyright restrictions did not allow for photocopying,” he says. Just when he was really getting started, he hit a wall. For 31-year-old Heba Kholeif, also an Alexandria resident, the wall was even higher. “I am totally blind,” Kholeif says, “and that makes it nearly impossible to read standard printed materials.” According to the World report on disability, published by the World Health Organization (WHO)/World Bank in June, more than one billion people live with some form of disability. Disability issues tend to be discussed in terms of barriers to physical access, and while it is true that many built environments, including public spaces and transport systems present obstacles of this kind, one of the biggest barriers faced in what is often described as “the information age” is the lack of access to information. For Sobhi, Kholeif and other people living with visual impairment, reading standard printed books can be particularly challenging. But the situation is beginning to change. For Sobhi and Kholeif the most important development has been the development of the Digital Accessible Information SYstem (DAISY) and its relatively recent emergence in Arabic. DAISY books are made up of a combination of text, graphics and audio files, providing users with an experience similar to that of flipping through a printed book. Users can read DAISY books on specialized devices or download software to use on a computer. In the same way that sighted people might glance at a heading and skip to the section of interest to them, DAISY books are designed so that users can navigate through them with flexibility.