NEW MICROSOFT SOFTWARE FEATURE TO BENEFIT OVER 60,000 BLIND MALAYSIANS

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 5 (Bernama) -- Over 60,000 blind people in Malaysia will be able to benefit from a new software feature, 'Save As DAISY XML', introduced by the National Council for the Blind (NCBM) in collaboration with Microsoft Malaysia for Microsoft Word.

NCBM president, S. Kulasegaran, said Microsoft's initiative to put
the software in Microsoft Word was the first step to bring fully accessible content to people with assistive needs.

"The new software will allow everyone to create documents with content that
can be accessible by Malaysians with assistive needs including blind, visually
impaired or physically challenged.

"Because Microsoft Word is widely used in this country and around the
world, this opens up the possibility to unlimited information on a global scale
and will eventually increase the usage of information and communications
technology by the blind community," he said at the media briefing here
today.

Kulasegaran hoped that the council could work with Microsoft and the
government to produce a Bahasa Malaysia speech engine soon.

He said the council also planned to work with international organisations
to promote the interests and well-being of blind and vision impaired people
around the world.

Microsoft Malaysia's national technology officer, Dr Dzahar Mansor, said
currently, about 600 visually-impaired people in the country used Microsoft
Malaysia.

"Because Microsoft Word is a commonly-used tool, this add-in allows for
content creators in different fields to produce accessible digital materials by
and for Malaysians," he said.

-- BERNAMA