Today, at the Council of Ministers headquarters in the New Administrative Capital, Dr. Mostafa Madbouly, Prime Minister, witnessed the signing of a partnership memorandum on joint cooperation to improve the integration of persons with disabilities between 10 entities through the project to improve access to information in Egypt using DAISY Multimedia Publications technology, in coordination with the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to implement the project.

The signing was attended by Dr. Amr Talaat, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Mrs. Nevine El-Kabbaj, Minister of Social Solidarity, Dr. Mohamed Ayman Ashour, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and Dr. Nevin Al-Kilani, Minister of Culture.

The partnership memorandum was signed between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, represented by the National Academy of Information Technology for Persons with Disabilities, the Ministry of Education and Technical Education, the National Council for Persons with Disabilities, the Library of Alexandria, and “National Library and Archives “, Ain Shams University,” “Cairo University,” “Alexandria University,” “Mansoura University,” and “Al-Azhar University.”

The partnership memorandum was signed by Dr. Reda Hegazy, Minister of Education and Technical Education, and Dr. Abdel Moneim Mohamed El Sharkawy, President of the “National Academy of Information Technology for Persons with Disabilities,” on behalf of Dr. Amr Talaat, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Dr. Mohamed Soliman, Head of the Sector at the Library of Alexandria, Dr. Osama Talaat, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the General Authority for Books and National Archives, Dr. Mohamed Sami Abdel Sadiq, Vice President of Cairo University for Community Service and Environmental Development Affairs, Dr. Ghada Farouk Hassan, Acting Director of Ain Shams University, and Dr. Abdel Aziz Qansouh, President of Alexandria University, Dr. Sherif Youssef Khater, President of Mansoura University, and Dr. Salama Dawoud, representative of Al-Azhar University.

Ambassador Nader Saad, the official spokesman for the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, said that the Egyptian state pays special attention to the integration and empowerment of people with disabilities, and therefore this partnership memorandum, through the project of using digital information system technology, aims to improve people’s access to information, especially those who suffer from difficulty reading printed text, including visual, physical, or mental difficulty reading.

He added: The project supports people who have difficulty reading printed texts through the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) technology, in cooperation with the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and its project to improve the integration of people with disabilities by enhancing access to information in Egypt.

"DAISY" technology is a digital means of making information and publications available to individuals who are blind, visually impaired, or who suffer from disabilities with printed text. These files may contain digital audio recordings of human or artificial speech, encoded text, and a set of files that can be read by a machine to serve blind people, and the visually impaired through multimedia publications.

It is worth noting that the first phase of this project was supported and implemented in cooperation with JICA and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Library of Alexandria, and the General Authority for National Library and Archives.

Saad said: The partnership memorandum comes for the purpose of coordinating and strengthening Egyptian-Japanese cooperation to implement the second phase of the project of improving the integration of people with disabilities by improving access to information in the Arab Republic of Egypt using “DAISY” technology.