Voicrill initiative seeks to make books accessible for students with visual impairments

AMMAN — Voicrill, a rights-based initiative launched in 2017 at the University of Jordan (UJ), converts books into audio recordings to give blind students and students with visual impairments access to studying materials, according to its founder Heba Abbadi.

Students send Voicrill the material they need. Then, a team of distributors divides it into parts and sends it to volunteers to record on their phones. Once the Voicrill's team receives the recordings, they redact, filter and combine them into one, Abbadi told The Jordan Times.

“We also have another group of volunteers who are resuming their work in the recording studio of UJ’s library, following a pandemic pause,” said Abbadi.

She noted that remote volunteering focuses on the current needs of students with visual impairments, while Voicrill’s work in the library’s studio follows a systematic plan to record the curricula of all academic streams.  

As for copy rights, “The Law on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities No. 20 for the Year 2017” permits converting all written materials into forms accessible by persons with visual impairments without asking for the writer’s or publisher’s permission, Abbadi said.

“We are currently working on building a website or application where we can upload the recorded material for blind persons and persons with visual impairments to access,” she added.

The initiative also converts books and other documents from PDF into word documents that are readable by assistive technologies and organises technical volunteering to assist blind students during exams or registration and help them search for any studying material they may need.

“During summer break, volunteers record all sorts of non-academic books, including novels, short stories, poems, and so on,” she added.

Voicrill’s volunteers have recorded 200 books since its launch, Abbadi said, noting that the work Voicrill does “is not a service, but a given right for all blind people and people with visual impairments”.

“Our goal is to become an international initiative concerned with the rights of visually disabled persons around the world,” she added.

She also said that Voicrill helped launch an initiative called “Basirah”, which recorded all school curriculums from grades 1 to 10 in Jordan and has recently been launched in Palestine.