ASP Executive Director Ranil Sorongon and staff hosted Japanese guests, headed by Mr. Hiroshi Kawamura, the immediate past president of the International Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) Consortium last November 8 and 9, 2012. Mr. Kawamura’s group included Ms. Nakatami, Ms. Hamada, Mr. Chiba and Mr. Nishimoto of the Assistive Technology Development Organization (ATDO) of Japan and Mr. Misukami of Shinano Kenshi Co., the producer of PlexTalk, an assistive device for persons with disabilities.
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| Meeting of Japanese visitors with Mr. Ranilo Sorongon |
The Japanese group was here in the country for a series of meetings with stakeholders from the academe, the government and from the sector of persons with disabilities for the conceptualization of a project which will be funded from the Overseas Development Assistance of Japan.
The group visited ASP to give an orientation of the project, to know more about the organization and the current project of ASP, the “Teaching Children with Disabilities Their Rights Using the Digital Talking Books”. The project funded by the Australian Aid aims to educate 500 children with disabilities of their rights based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) using the digital talking books. The DAISY Consortium through Mr. Kawamura donated a computer set with a Dolphin Publisher program being used by ASP to publish the digital talking books (DTBs) which is being use to produce the Rights of the Child DTBs in the current project of ASP.
The visitors were so impressed upon seeing, hearing the DTBs on the rights of the child and knowing that the illustrator of the learning stories is a person with autism. “The content and drawings of the learning stories are 'culture-free', it can be used by children with disabilities as well as those without disabilities to know their rights” commented Mr. Hisao Chiba, a former staff of Nippon Foundation and a current researcher of ATDO. Ms. Mayu Hamada, the technical person of ATDO asked a copy of the DTBs from Director Sorongon for her to showcase the DTBs to stakeholders in Japan.
Ms. Hamada is also helping ASP as a volunteer technical consultant in the DTBs production, she gave valuable inputs in every aspect of DTBs. She will be coming back on January 2013 to give a seminar-workshop to ASP on the use of TOBI, a new open source program to produce DAISY DTBs.
ASP is grateful for the valuable support of the DAISY Consortium and ATDO for providing an alternative way of educating children with disabilities through the digital talking books.
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