Bringing accessible reading to the visually impaired
KUALA LUMPUR, 2 March 2016 – Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia Berhad has helped bring accessible reading to more people by providing Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Pendidikan Khas Cacat Penglihatan Setapak and Malaysian Association for the Blind (MAB) with Braille and audio books recently. This is just one of the Bank’s many ‘Seeing is Believing’ initiatives that centres on its ongoing promise to sustain the visually impaired community.
The Bank’s 100 staff-volunteers started the project in August 2015, which required the volunteers to type out content from text books to produce pre-embossing material for Braille-reading book production. Volunteers also attended audio book production sessions to turn books into audio CDs.
Dato’ Arif Siddiqui, Champion of Seeing is Believing in Malaysia and Chief Information Officer, Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia said: “This project is aligned with our Seeing is Believing’s global aspiration. The Bank has spent more than RM2 million for various community investment programmes in Malaysia over the last three years, which includes a collaboration with the Ministry of Health to establish a National Intraocular Lens Implant Bank.
The programme has helped many Malaysians in rural areas, who are less fortunate and cannot afford lens implants, which is required for visual recovery in a cataract surgery. The programme is an astounding success with more than 4,000 cataract surgeries (with lens implants) performed by June 2015.”
Seeing is Believing (SiB) is Standard Chartered’s global initiative to tackle avoidable blindness and visual impairment and has committed to raise USD100 million by 2020. Since 2003, SiB has successfully raised over USD86 million, reached 111 million people, funded 3.6 million cataract surgeries, distributed 874,000 pairs of spectacles and trained more than 192,000 healthcare professionals, globally.
At Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Pendidikan Khas Cacat Penglihatan, Setapak Principal, Encik Jalaluddin, (6th from left) and Dato' Arif Siddiqui, Champion of Seeing is Believing and Chief Information Officer, Standard Chartered Malaysia (Centre), Setapak schoolteachers, the visually impaired students and Standard Chartered volunteers at the ceremony
Dato' Arif Siddiqui, Champion of Seeing is Believing and Chief Information Officer, Standard Chartered Malaysia (4th from right), handing over the Braille Books to the visually impaired students
A visually impaired Setapak schoolteacher demonstrating to Dato' Arif Siddiqui how to use an embossing machine
Making reading accessible to the visually impaired: Standard Chartered volunteers typing out content from text books to produce pre-embossing material for Braille-reading book production.
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