Largest digital library on earth for the blind opens

According to the Spanish National Organisation for the Blind, ONCE – which runs a daily lottery to raise funds for the disabled – a total of 285 million people worldwide are either completely non-sighted or have very serious vision problems that practically impede their eyesight at all bar the most functional levels, such as recognising the position of large objects when navigating their homes.

This translates to 4% of the planet's population – a significant minority – all of whom could potentially read the contents of any published text on earth as long as they understood Spanish, the third-most spoken and read language globally after Mandarin Chinese and Hindi in terms of numbers and of native speakers, the second-most in terms of distribution, and the fourth-most when counting non-native speakers.

Whilst English is the most widely-distributed language and the third-most spoken, it is the only language on earth which has more non-native than mother-tongue speakers, so Spanish is practically level-pegging.

Huge numbers of blind people in the USA will be able to access the library set up by the ONCE, given that native speakers of Spanish alone, not counting those who have learnt it, total over 50 million – more than in Spain.

In total, the library has 34,000 texts in DAISY (Digitally Accessible Information System) format, 27,000 in Braille and 3,000 in sounds.

Its access is completely free of charge, and its creation makes Spain the first country in Europe to apply the Treaty of Marrakech on integration of cultural material for the blind and partially-sighted – an agreement for which ONCE is the main representative.

During the presentation at the Cervantes Institute – the global centre for promotion of the Spanish language and Spanish and Hispanic culture – ONCE's social services deputy chairwoman Imelda Fernández and the Institute's director Luis García Montero unveiled the system and a man named Carlos Galindos, who is blind from birth, gave a demonstration on how it works.

García Montero says the project 'multiplies the diffusion of the Institute's work by 100', whilst ONCE's assistant head of social services for members, Andrés Ramos, calls it 'the biggest digital library in the Spanish language adapted for the blind and partially-sighted' and 'the largest accessible Spanish-language library on earth'.

The photograph, by the ONCE Foundation, shows Carlos Galindos demonstrating how to use the library during its presentation at the Cervantes Institute.