Gyeonggi Province to Offer”Talking Documents”

Createdd 2007-08-20 Hit 6565

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The Province of Gyeonggi will soon be offering ‘talking documents’, which are documents that have been converted into speech.

The Province announced that it is currently making talking versions of public documents, in a significant effort to remove barriers to information access faced by the visually impaired.

The “talking document”system is the first of its kind to be introduced by a local government in Korea. The complete text of the document is encoded in a highly dense 2D barcode, which is placed in the upper-right hand corner of the public documents, which is then read by a barcode reader and spoken by speech software.

Gyeonggi Province will conduct the pilot test for publications, including all public documents and PR data issued by the Welfare Center for the Disabled, at the end of 2007. If the system is successful, Gyeonggi Province will expand the implementation of talking documents to all public documents and PR data released by the Province from 2008.

As multiple languages, including English and Japanese, as well as Korean can be converted into this 2D barcode, the barcode is expected to help the visually impaired by enabling them to access information from public documents, books, certificates, prescriptions, and even musical notes.

In particular, the introduction of this system is recognized as a very timely action, as the Ban on Discrimination against the Disabled and Remedy for Violation of Private Rights was enacted in 2007. The Law will become effective from August 2008, and the introduction of this system is expected to contribute to the equal information access prescribed by this law.

The introduction of this 2D barcode will also be recognized as very meaningful, as while there are over 200,000 visually impaired people in Korea, only 10% have the ability to read braille.

Kim Gyeong-suk, a visually impaired person, excitedly said, “There had been no way for me to understand documents without Braille and help from others. Now I can listen to and understand the talking document, and it is so convenient. Thank you for the support.”

Gyeonggi Province expects that the talking documents will allow illiterate people and senior citizens with poor eyesight as well as the visually impaired to easily and conveniently access information.