Civil Defence in braille

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 5, Issue 24, 10 November 1987, Page 8

Civil Defence in braille

A major first for 7000 New Zealanders is civil defence instructions in braille, large print and on cassette. Word for word, comma for comma, members of the Royal new Zealand Foundation for the Blind will receive their civil defence "telephone book pages" in about three weeks. This was announced in Wellington recently bjr the Associate Minister of Social Welfare, Annette King, as part of "Eye Care" community week with the Foundation's annual appeal. Funded by the AMP Civil Defence Project with cosponsors Audiophonic Industries of Auckland, these manuals with a difference have been compiled from the back pages of the Auckland and Wellington telephone books.

Chairman of the Foundation's board of trustees, Don McKenzie, welcomed the AMP Civil Defence manuals as "a great comfort" for people with impaired sight who often suffer a gap in information taken for granted by sighted people. "It can be potentially scary for blind people to find their surroundings suddenly changed through a natural or man-made emergency," said Mr McKenzie, a physiotherapist, and blind himself since he was five years old. "As a third of our members live on their own and a large number of our elderly are not as fleet footed as they use to be, there is . a real need for them to practise and rehearse for an emergency," he said. Mr McKenzie said that apart from providing practical instruction, he hoped the manuals would prompt a wider social conscious-

ness raising in New Zealand communities. "I would like to see Foundation members automatically hooked into neighbourhood support and local civil defence groups so that during an emergency their house is the first port of call," Mr McKenzie said. "This is not normally a problem in small communities but in larger cities a blind person can sometimes be isolated," he said. "Often this is because our people can be very independent so the initiative may need to be taken by community groups, even if it's only a watchful eye from a distance," he said. The AMP Civil Defence manuals were produced by the Foundation's manager for library services, Mary Schnackenburg, using new computerised software which automatically translates the printed word into braille.