(Video Producer: Deng Haoran)
Tianjin, April 22 (Xinhua) -- For the visually impaired, reading books seems to be an impossible enjoyment, but they are using "sound" to "chisel" a beam of light for the lightless small world.
"Extravagant" reading
When Cai Cheng, secretary general of the Tianjin Disabled Persons' Federation Blind Association, took out a braille book and put it on the table, he made a bang.
Yellow kraft paper, thick binding, convex and interlaced floating points constitute the undulating waves on the yellow ocean, and touching with your fingers is the pulse of the text.
"Not many people read this kind of book now." Cai Cheng took a little effort to find the book, and even if he himself retained the habit of reading braille books, he had to admit that reading, for visually impaired people like him, was always a relatively "luxury" in the past.
The printing of Braille books requires special equipment and paper, and the small market size and the audience's willingness to read are doomed to a relatively embarrassing situation of Braille books - often only used for blind school textbooks, and there are very few other books on the market.
Through touching, visually impaired people are able to read books in Braille. Xinhua News Agency reporter Guo Fangda photographed on April 20
Blind masseur Zhao Jinliang recalled that in the 1990s, a set of braille books cost tens of hundreds of yuan, which was an absolute "luxury", in addition to teaching materials, students had a very difficult opportunity to see new books, and could only get together to listen to the radio to "quench their thirst".
At the same time, the wear rate of Braille books is far beyond imagination, and Cai Cheng said that the wear and tear of Braille books is highly correlated with the borrowing situation. "The paper is a small point of bulge, when touched by hand, it will gradually flatten, after many times, may be the words expressed on the book are completely different, the more you read, the faster the book will deteriorate." 」 Cai Cheng said that braille documents may be borrowed dozens of times and then smoothed out because of bumps, and can only be discarded.
"If it is to study, braille books are still very necessary, and professional knowledge is still a good memory for fingertip reading." Zhao Jinliang felt that for able-bodied people, forgetting to write is "very humiliating", and blind people cannot read and write their own words. But he also acknowledges that reading may have been removed from the lives of many blind people.
"Listening to books" has become one of Zhao Jinliang's hobbies on weekdays. (Photo by Xinhua news agency reporter Guo Fangda on April 20)
Another way back
Operating smart devices such as mobile phones for the "post-90s" blind girl Ma Yinqing has long been familiar with the road, with the help of mobile phone voice and screen reading software, reading novels, learning recipes are the norm in her life, "Some people always ask me how to do it, in fact, it is the same as everyone."
Out of the campus, the opportunity to read is gradually decreasing, Ma Yinqing's fingertips and books are in close contact with a few times, "many libraries do not have Braille borrowing areas or Braille books, which is very inconvenient."
Reading a book is like building a few bricks, and after reading a set of books, you can build a wall. Ma Yinqing felt that except for some elderly people, the pace of reading books by friends around him was getting faster and faster, and traditional Braille books like bricks were "going too slowly."
Online reading at the Chinese Braille Library slightly satisfies Ma Yinqing's needs. But simply listening to the book did not satisfy her. The lack of interpretation of the small collection of books and mechanical reading has made Ma Yinqing, who has tried the dubbing of dramas, fall into thinking, how to let more visually impaired friends read books and read good books?
Ma Yinqing knows that it is not easy for ordinary people to cultivate reading habits, and visually impaired people face greater psychological resistance - what is the use of reading more? She had heard such complaints before. "We can at least make reading more convenient and fun." Ma Yinqing feels that for blind people, it is more important to let them know the "possibilities" of the world, and reading is such a means.
The increasingly popular audiobook hit her pain point, and more and more friends around her began to listen to books on their mobile phones, and Ma Yinqing seemed to feel a glimmer of hope.
It's the reader and the communicator
The screen name of the visually impaired Liu Zhiwei is "Wolong Remnant Snow", which is like the title of hero in martial arts novels. His own image is also very ironed with the screen name - sharp inches, solid arms, thick voice.
From massage to assisting in screen reading software development, Liu Zhiwei's income is not stable. By chance, Liu Zhiwei came into contact with the work of recording books, and because of his love for books and the sensitivity of his voice, he was eager to try. After trying to record dozens of books, he gradually found the feeling and settled down on the audiobook platform.
Walking into the office and skillfully turning on the recording equipment, Liu Zhiwei was busy in front of the computer and microphone every day, sitting for hours at a time. The headphones played the e-book sentence by sentence, listening to it while finishing the recording of a chapter of the novel, and as more and more fans followed him, the name of "Wolong Residual Snow" gradually became louder.
In 2019, Ma Yinqing, who did not want to be in the blind massage industry for a lifetime, also founded a company with several like-minded visually impaired friends, recorded the online text as an audiobook, and signed the first business, the partner did not know that he was visually impaired until they met. In that year alone, the company's turnover exceeded 300,000 yuan. "Reading, recording, listening, we proved a possibility." Ma Yinqing said.
Yu Jianjun, founder and CEO of Himalaya, said, "There are more than 8,000 disabled anchors on the platform, of which the visually impaired people are also one of the best content creators and disseminators, and among these anchors, the album has been played more than 800 million times. The vigorous development of the "ear economy" has made the path of employment for the visually impaired groups also born new possibilities.
"Of course, not everyone can be an anchor, but even if we just listen to books, the world has been chiseled open a small slit that can penetrate the light, and we can understand and even try all kinds of possibilities." 」 Cai Cheng said.