The World for the Blind in Taiwan

[Hsuan-chu (Chloe) Lee]

The Associations for the visually Impaired in Taiwan

    Back to 1891, a foreign priest (甘為霖as the Chinese name) founded the first school for the visually impaired in Tainan, the previous capital like Turku in Finland , where locates in the Southern Taiwan. To date, in Taiwan we have more associations for the blind throughout. Let’s take Taipei, the capital, for instance, today I would like to introduce what kind of associations for the blind in Taiwan.
I would break this topic down on three perspectives- the education, career, and entertainment.
For the education, there is The School for the Visually Impaired in New Taipei.
    It is founded for the deaf and blind since 1917, by the Japanese called木村謹吾. Afterwards, the system for the special education turned more sophisticated, so the school for the deaf and blind was separated.
    In 2000, The School for the Visually Impaired developed the whole education system for the blind. From the kindergarten to the senior high school or the vocational school, the visually impaired schoolchildren can stay in the same school for 15 years long. The school has lots of social resources like audio books for the children from Taipei Resource Center for the Visual Impairment, located in the school itself.
    Trough the gallery on the website, I saw that the blind schoolchildren are not just confined to the indoor activities. They were taken to the zoo in Taipei and the traditional culture center in Yilan. Even though they cannot see the world with eyes, they “feel” it by all means. The more social contact they have, the easier they can develop their career after graduation.
    Unfortunately, all the associations I searched for the blind tend not have the English version of official websites. It was shocking to me since lots of social associations were founded by Westerners or Japanese. Although we try to localize our own service, we need to open ourselves to the whole world. Here is the e-mail and the phone number of The School for the Visually Impaired. [e-mail] ([phone])
    For the career, there is the association of the advancement welfare for the blind in Taipei since 1957. As I saw, the association is good at connecting social resources. They maintain relationships with plenty of companies such as中華電信、台灣大哥大、遠傳電信、帝盟科技、富晶電子、和碩聯合科技、友達光電、南亞科技、信義房屋、森森百貨、耕莘醫院及新北市政府 and so on. Most of them are technology companies. The association sends their professional blind masseurs to serve these clients and also get some support from them.

    Speaking of the massage, every blind masseurs serve with the license. If you are craving for some self-indulgence, you can make a reservation online or by phone call. The service will be home delivery, which means they will drive theses blind masseurs to your places to massage you. From Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 10 pm in New Taipei Area, this service is right for everyone. Also, the price is reasonable, 800 NTD for one hour, about 20 euros and you can have the whole-body or feet massage.
Moreover, everyone deserves more choices. The association works on more possibilities for the blind. Now, they have a program of “telephone marketing (電話行銷)” for them. In other words, the blind are able to get the training and make sale business via phone calls. The products they sell are newspapers, magazines and even insurance. The blind members are empowered by selling products on their own. Now, the association is looking for more products for them to promote.
    The e-mail of the association is [e-mail] and the phone number is [phone].
    Last but not least, the entertainment is important for everyone. There is an interesting association for the blind to play BASEBALL, the most popular sport in Taiwan, called Taiwan Beep Baseball Association, that is founded since 1996. It shares the faith that sports should be played by EVERYONE. In 2009, the Taiwan team won the second place of the world game for the blind . In 2010, they were invited to play with many foreign teams. The info to contact them is :

球員 players／ 召集人：張壬壤 [phone]
志工 volunteers／聯絡人：張宇萱 [phone]
Email：[e-mail]

    They maintain a blogger (http://taiwanbba.blogspot.fi/) to interact with the society. In many photos, I saw some foreigners were playing baseball with the Taiwanese members. Since they already have some channels to reach out, it would be a good business opportunity for someone who is interested.
    Hope this introduction helps!

[Helge Keitel]

Take a look at Blind Square http://bambuser.com/v/3149666

[Helge Keitel]

Hsuen-chu, take a look at Ilkka Pirttima's recent achievments with Blind Sqaure http://blog.usercentredbusiness.com/240/blindsquare-wins-opencities...

[Helge Keitel]

Ilkka, for your information, Chloe is doing the same research of Shanghai and Beijing tomorrow and publish connections. She will also get in touch with some information technology departments to inquire for Apple iOS programmers of Friday. Tomorrow I'll be traveling via Tampere to Helsinki. Would you have a few minutes over a cup of coffee in Helsinki at 16 hours before I leave to Loviisa?