With Braille labels for medicines, two Hongkongers help city’s visually impaired see better days
System relying on ‘dot characters’ offers greater peace of mind to those who must otherwise rely only on what medical staff tell them
Alex Chan Chi-kong moves carefully as he stumbles towards the couch so he can sit down to read a magazine.
The 55-year-old man grips the oversized book, tucking it under his left arm so he can use his cane with his right hand.
While Chan experiences literature no less deeply than people who are sighted, he reads from a ponderous text rendered in Braille.
“The book is so thick because each page only contains a fraction of the reading material of the actual magazine,” Chan says.
To many, it remains a mystery how all the bumps on the pages make sense to the visually impaired. In Chan’s case, he suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder caused by a loss of cells in the retina, the light sensitive tissue that lines the back of the eye.