Nearly 200 key officials of national and local blind associations nationwide attended a seminar on “IT application and job opportunities for blind people” held in central Da Nang City on Sept. 9.
At the seminar, jointly organised by the Vietnam Blind Association (VBA) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), participants agreed that blind people need help to assess IT in order to improve their living conditions, professional skills and seek appropriate jobs.
The VBA currently has about 50,000 members, including 12,000 in the working age. They mainly do simple works to earn their living, and get low incomes.
Thanks to a number of projects on helping the Vietnamese blind people to gain access to IT, such as the publication of IT books in Brail and CDs on IT, many blind people have learnt IT which is helpful in their work and study. The Internet also assisted them in vocational training at home and enable them seize chances to get good jobs.
The president of the Vietnam Blind Association, Dao Soat, said that IT and the Internet have helped blind people get information, improve their knowledge, and provide them more opportunities to find employment.
The VBA will call for more sources to create a database on training and employment for the blind, and build a complete software of Vietnamese language for them, Soat said.
