A new project to adapt a number of literary and cinematographic works for people with visual disabilities has started in Lviv. It is implemented by the public organization Lviv branch of the NGO “Ukrainian Union of the Disabled – USI”, with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.
The coordinator of the project is Oksana Potymko, a blind woman from Lviv, and the team consists of 12 specialists. These are Braille text editors, audio describers and experts, artists and sound engineers, announcers. In particular, People’s Artist of Ukraine Oleksandra Bonkovska, artist of the VF “Picardian Third” Yaroslav Nudyk, actress of the First Theater Lesya Shkap’yak, sound engineer of the theater named after Maria Zankovetska Yaroslav Bosiy, artist of the “People and Dolls” theater Elya Bosovych, and others. The inclusive team of professionals includes several blind specialists.
The project provides:
1) the publication in Braille of three books: “Overcoming the past. Global history of Ukraine”, “Lyubomyr Huzar. Outstanding personalities. People who made history”, “Encyclopedia for the curious. Growing up as Ukrainians”. The circulation of each edition reaches 60 copies. Since books in braille are extremely voluminous, the total number of published books will be 640 copies;
2) production of the three audiobooks mentioned above;
3) adaptation for blind viewers of three full-length feature films, creating an audio description for them: “Assassination”, “Invincible”, “Andrei”. The tapes of the Ukrainian director Oles Yanchuk acquaint the audience with the activities of outstanding personalities of Ukrainian history – Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, Andriy Sheptytskyi.
“The goal of the project is to adapt a series of literary and audiovisual works by Ukrainian authors and film companies for residents of different regions of Ukraine who have lost their sight, thereby creating a new inclusive cultural product with a deeply informative and motivating content. All produced books and films will be transferred to all regions of Ukraine without exception – special and inclusive schools and libraries, online resources for people with visual impairments, etc. In this way, the people of Lviv strive to convey to the target audience the true, undistorted history of Ukraine, to show how much grief Russian occupation has always brought Ukrainians, how we are different from Russians, and how important it is to understand the history of one’s own people in order to overcome the past and its stereotypes.” – says the coordinator of the project – a blind woman from Lviv, Oksana Potymko