Seeing by ear

The visually-impaired people feel their life quality been much improved thanks to Hongdandan's various activities.

When Wang started to train broadcasters at Hongdandan, he found that the lack of reference to imagery affects their lives in many aspects.

He points out that Braille is marked with phonetic symbols, but is not ideographic.

"The hearing-impaired have hearing aids, and the limb-impaired have artificial limbs. But what do the visually challenged have? They can't even see the everyday things in society. So you have to tell them what you see," he says.

Once they can "see" the world by hearing, he says, they can process information.

Wang trains the volunteers by asking them to climb stairs blindfolded or play games, so they can experience how the visually impaired know the world.

He uses senses they have in common - such as being sweaty to explain the feeling of the sun. The more detailed, the better, he says.

"Sometimes, the sense of touch can substitute for language, to guide them into the movies quickly," he says. For example, when Wang described Hollywood hit Jurassic Park, he bought many dinosaur models, so that they could visualize how a giant tyrannosaurus rex looks by their fingertips.

Wang recently completed The Handbook of Visual Narration to guide people to describe films to the visually impaired.

But Hongdandan's visual narration programs are not just about films. They also offer other public-spirited projects to make the visually impaired people's lives more colorful, from touching sculptures to providing descriptions of photos, sports competitions and dramas.

The NGO regularly organizes groups for tours, with guides to tell them about the pretty scenery. Hongdandan took 25 visually impaired people to Bashang Grassland in Hebei province to ride horses in June. For many of them, it was the first time they stepped out of Beijing.

According to Hongdandan, among the more than 2,000 public libraries in China, only about 100 have reading rooms for the visually impaired. Only China Digital Library for Visual Impairment and Hongdandan's Xinmu Library offer voice books.

Hongdandan recruits volunteers from universities and enterprises to record the latest voice books, with all the information such as illustrations and binding and layout designs. By 2015, it aims to train 10,000 volunteers and record 10,000 voice books every year.

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