Life Chances for Blind and Visually Impaired People in the Information Age
Introduction
First of all, I want to say how glad I am to be back in Africa after an absence of more than ten years. As the pioneer of computerised braille production on the continent, I have a particular interest in the role of computers in the lives of blind and visually impaired people. When we set up African Braille Computer Development (ABCD) in Nairobi in the mid 1980s, we anticipated the internet by using airlines to courier discs between the origination centre in Nairobi and production points through East, Central and Southern Africa; so I hope that in this presentation I will again be able accurately to predict the way ahead.
First, however, we need to take a quick look at the general environment, starting with a few simple definitions:
- Most people use the terms IT (Information technology) and ICT (information and communications technology) interchangeably to mean PC or Apple computers communicating with each other through the telephone system.
- There are variants of the IT system which involve the use of other communications carriers between computers such as wireless, broadband telephony and satellite.
- I will use the term digital information system to mean the communications network in any form between devices of any kind that can send, receive and process digital information. I am therefore not confining myself exclusively to the computers we have become used to during the past two decades.