Survey shows that an average of 14,000 blind people in China only have 1 new book in 1 year

An average of 14,000 blind people have a new book in one year -

Running through the bookstore, I can't buy a blind book

On May 19, he lived in the home of Yan Jiasheng, a blind person near the China University of Mining and Technology, and welcomed three special guests - volunteers from the Xuzhou Xinyuan Service Center. He made a special trip to "read" him.

According to the survey, there are 14 million visually-impaired people in China. Of this huge group, an average of 14,000 people have only one new book a year.

"I read more than 10 years ago"

“The last time I read a book was still more than 10 years ago!” On the afternoon of the 19th, Yang Hongjian, a blind masseur at the 54-year-old Xuzhou Civil Affairs Hospital, said with emotion. After being blinded by trauma in his early teens, he relied on hand-in-hand braille for reading. "In the 1980s and 1990s, we could buy books from Xinhua Bookstore and we wouldn't have them later."

On the day of "helping the disabled," a company in Nanjing wanted to buy some blind reading books to present blind children, and went through several large bookstores to go home empty handed. The reporter learned that at present, only China's Braille Press has published and sold books on the blind, and it has only published 100,000 copies in more than a year. This is compared to the new astronomical books each year on the market.

Bookstores do not sell blind books because there is not much profit. According to Liu Changshan, director of the reader service department of Braille Press, ordinary books are generally printed in 5,000 copies, and thirty to fifty copies of Braille books are printed, and one page can only hold 300 words. "A "Dream of Red Mansions", 32 copies of the ordinary printing version will be able to produce the full 32, tens of dollars, while the Braille version of the 8 to open 17 copies, a full set of pricing more than 500 yuan.On this pricing, it only accounts for the cost of five One in a minute."

Audio books are more expensive than Braille books. In the area of ​​Nanjing Xinhua Bookstore audio-visual products, the reporter saw a set of audio books, covering dozens of literary classics, priced at 1,380 yuan. The staff explained that there are no blind people who buy audio books. “Aside from the high prices, audio books are not designed for blind people. It is inconvenient to operate. Most of them are bought on the car.”

Blind reading room

Why not see a blind person

On May 17th, the reporter entered the reading room for visually impaired people in the Nanjing Library. More than 3,000 volumes of Braille books and more than 20,000 audio-visual materials stood silently on the bookshelf. In a space of 700 square meters, there are no readers except two staff members. Zhao Zeng, head of the Children and Visually Impaired Division at Nantu, said that it is inconvenient for the blind to go out and there are very few to read in the library.

Wang Hai, a blind man in Nanjing’s Baixia District, told the reporter that the reason why there are few readers in the reading room for the blind is that there is a more important reason for this. That is, the content of the collection is single, and apart from medicine, it is literature. Can blind people only need these two kinds of books? In order to read more books, Wang Hai borrowed books from the Central Library of Taiwan and the Library of Changhua Normal University in Taiwan.

The data held by Liu Changshan shows that even with the country's high publishing volume, the average 14,000 blind people across the country only have 1 new book each year, while normal people can have at least 40 titles each year.

Looking forward to the "needle eye" sunlight

Illuminate the darkness of a lifetime

In view of the lack of spiritual and cultural life for the blind, there are good trials being carried out everywhere:

Xuzhou Xinyuan Volunteer Service Center organized volunteers to set up a “spiritual library” to read the books that blind people wanted to read and record them as CDs for them. In Jianye District, Nanjing, community residents were given donations of old calendars and 300 books for the blind were produced for free to the blind and needy.

Shi Shunxi of the Nanjing Disabled Persons' Federation told the reporter that although blind people cannot see the eyes, the thirst for information, especially new knowledge, is something ordinary people cannot understand. "They look forward to the sun in the "pinhole" (braille), which can illuminate the soul that is struggling in the dark for the rest of their lives." Shi Shunxi believes that on the one hand, the relevant departments must vigorously fund the publication of books for the blind and restore the distribution channels for the books; We must make full use of existing library resources. “A few large public libraries in China have built reading rooms for the blind, but they can’t build things. Now that most communities have some public activities, can we open blind reading rooms in the corner of the community and put blind books in the library? Information is distributed to communities so that blind people can read books at home?"

Hou Jinhai, director of the Nanjing School of Blindness Teaching, suggested that Internet audio reading should be the mainstream of blind reading. He hoped that the government would finance technicians as soon as possible to develop software that would make it easier for the blind to read. "This should be the way to invest less and get quick results."

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