Audiobooks for Kosovo’s visually impaired community
The right to education is a human right.
By Flakrona Rexhepi | July 6, 2024
Only a couple of centuries ago, access to education was available only to aristocrats and members of the clergy. Three generations ago, Albanians in Kosovo didn’t even have access to education in Albanian. However, the fact that we now have access to vast amounts of data and information, collected through centuries, is taken for granted.
It’s this knowledge that allowed humans to build skyscrapers and rockets, invent medicine that lets us live longer and healthier lives, technologies that allow us to maximize our human capabilities and create art and literature that lets us imagine a better world. Education is the fuel and spark of a healthy society.
There are multiple problems in Kosovo’s education system, as was recently proven by the most recent PISA results. We heard the blame being passed around from the ministry to teachers, to principals, to students and even technology. Everyone seems to agree that the way forward for every society is to have a well-educated population. But despite the endless advice we hear from our parents, teachers and politicians, little, if anything, is done to create the right conditions to foster learning and proper education. These changes could involve increasing wages for everyone involved in the education system, creating pleasant learning environments, updating teaching methods that incorporate technological advancements and a focus on critical thinking as opposed to learning facts by heart in order to pass a test. A lack of these elements affects students across Kosovo, and this is especially true for the most vulnerable groups within our society, such as the visually impaired and the blind.
Although there is no data on the exact number of blind people in Kosovo, it is estimated that around 2,200 people benefit from the Law for Blind Persons, while there are around 5,000 people registered with the Kosovo Blind Association. There is only one school in Kosovo for the blind and visually impaired, Xheladin Deda Special School in Peja, which only offers books that cover material through high school. Meanwhile, The National Library in Prishtina has around 62 books in Braille, 30 audiobooks, but there are only 50 registered members. The Syri Ynë library in Prishtina is the only one that offers the appropriate materials for the visually impaired, but there are only around 100 registered members. The dedicated spaces for visually impaired people in Kosovo and access to books varies across different municipalities. There have been a few attempts to fill this gap in the system, but mainly by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and through foreign donations.
Back in 2017, there was an initiative started by a couple of young people called Libra me zë that aimed to record as audiobooks in Albanian and make them accessible online. However, their page and app “librameze.com” is no longer active.
As someone who studied literature, I can hardly imagine a world without access to books. I grew up in a small town that luckily had a library, which was not the case for most villages and small towns in Kosovo when I was growing up. The books that I had access to were mostly Russian and Albanian authors from the communist era, plus a few books from French and ancient Greek literature. Perhaps it wasn’t much, but it was enough to open my world to new ideas and possibilities. Even beyond this limited but fortunate access to local resources, education and access to good education have always been close to my heart.
For people with low vision or those who are blind, audiobooks are an invaluable format that gives them access to information, knowledge and reading for leisure.
In the past, Braille was the only format in which visually impaired people could access books. However, Braille books are quite large and heavy to carry around. Advancements in technology have been making things easier for years for people with disabilities. We live in the age of voice assistant software such as Siri and Alexa, screen readers, magnifiers and audiobooks.
For people with low vision or those who are blind, audiobooks are an invaluable format that gives them access to information, knowledge and reading for leisure. Especially in the English-speaking world, there’s a growing trend of famous people narrating various books and literature, and it’s been estimated that there are over 70,000 audiobooks published a year in the United States.
The fact that this format barely existed in Kosovo was shocking to me, so when the opportunity presented itself for me to help, I jumped at it. A friend told me about a project that the NGO Omcult was working on. Omcult needed volunteers to help record 100 audiobooks for visually impaired people in Kosovo. They already had a number of professional narrators recording and had selected books from different genres, from literature to sociology and psychology.
I am not a professional narrator or an actor, but if my voice and work could help make one more book accessible to the visually impaired, this was reason enough. For the purpose of this project, any genre of book would have been a good choice to narrate and add to the audio library. But being a student of literature, I believe that literary works can have a bigger impact on a person, so I chose a work of fiction. While working on the project, I became more aware of the issue, and I wanted more people to be involved.
I began discussing the issue with friends, family and coworkers. My best friend, who shares my love and appreciation for literature and education, joined me in the cause. We discussed the book selection and who should read what. We went to the self-made narrating booth and recorded for days. We erased and re-recorded ourselves, aiming to do our best for those who were going to hear it.
“Reading one book is a real treasure, but when that is not an option, then for us audiobooks are extremely valuable and make us feel more equal,” said Bajramshahe Jetullahu in K2.0’s mini-documentary about Omcult. Access to a suitable source of knowledge for anyone is the only way to receive a good education. And the Law for Blind Persons dictates that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology should provide materials for the visually impaired with the Braille alphabet, relief writing, big font writing and digital texts.
However, the right mechanisms should be in place to guarantee that the most disadvantaged in our society will also succeed in achieving their goals of education. This could begin with including them in future planning, increasing the number of books in Braille and training more staff in Braille so that the visually impaired community’s university experience is more comfortable, straightforward and accessible.
In a world with 2.2 million titles published annually, the 100 audiobooks that we recorded are not even close to enough for the visually impaired community in Kosovo, but they are a start. It is not enough to pass laws that “guarantee” education and equal opportunity for all when there are no mechanisms that foster the right conditions for people to reach a position where they feel truly equal. Empowering the disadvantaged and vulnerable by creating spaces for everyone to reach their full potential, is not only just, but necessary in a society that serves everyone.
Feature Image: K2.0
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