The Golden Eagle Award was given yesterday to recipients who have overcome their physical disabilities to accomplish outstanding achievements.
Formerly a businessman, writer, photographer and teacher at Shihsin University’s College of Journalism and Communications, Chen Hung (陳宏) became paralyzed in 2000 when he was 67 after getting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
ALS is a nervous disorder that causes patients to gradually lose the ability to control their muscles.
While Chen is still able to move his eyeballs and eyelids, his wife Liu Hsueh-hui (劉學慧) made a board with Chinese phonetic symbols to help him “talk.”
The phonetic board is a piece of transparent plastic with symbols written on it. When Chen wants to “say” something, he rolls his eyeballs toward a certain symbol. Once Liu finds the correct symbol on the board, he blinks to say “yes.” Chen painstakingly spells the word he wants to say by going from symbol to symbol.
“He spends four to five hours a day ‘writing’ articles, then I print them for him to proofread — it takes a week to complete a 1,000 character article,” said Liu, who attended the award ceremony organized by the Ministry of the Interior on behalf of her husband.
So far, Chen has published five books since he was paralyzed.
Su Ching-fu (蘇清富), a man who enjoys reading and is highly skilled with computers, has been visually impaired since he was a child.
“I was fortunate to have an opportunity to find about 30 Braille books, which were quite rare at the time, at school when I was in the fifth grade,” Su said. “I fell in love with reading so I decided that, one day, I would make books for the blind, and I wanted to write books for the general public.”
With these dreams in mind, Su worked hard at school.
“Not all textbooks have a Braille version, so I could only listen attentively in classes and borrow notes from classmates to turn them into Braille,” Su said. “I often had to spend twice the time or more as my classmates studying.”
With his hard work, Su was able to graduate from a regular high school and received a degree in Chinese literature from Tamkang University.
Su was excited when a Windows operation system for the blind was released in 2003 and immediately got to work mastering the computer.
“With an operating system especially designed for the blind, it’s much easier for us to get new information, develop skills or solve problems at work or at school,” Su said.
He then set up a computer lab to teach computer lessons to other visually impaired individuals.
Su also used computers to translate books into Braille and record audiobooks.
Convinced that knowledge is power, especially for the handicapped, Su said: “I have a new goal now to create an online audiobook database that will allow the visually impaired to download audiobooks anywhere at anytime for free.”
Taiwan would benefit from more integrated military strategies and deployments if the US and its allies treat the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a “single theater of operations,” a Taiwanese military expert said yesterday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said he made the assessment after two Japanese military experts warned of emerging threats from China based on a drill conducted this month by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command. Japan Institute for National Fundamentals researcher Maki Nakagawa said the drill differed from the
‘WORSE THAN COMMUNISTS’: President William Lai has cracked down on his political enemies and has attempted to exterminate all opposition forces, the chairman said The legislature would motion for a presidential recall after May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday at a protest themed “against green communists and dictatorship” in Taipei. Taiwan is supposed to be a peaceful homeland where people are united, but President William Lai (賴清德) has been polarizing and tearing apart society since his inauguration, Chu said. Lai must show his commitment to his job, otherwise a referendum could be initiated to recall him, he said. Democracy means the rule of the people, not the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), but Lai has failed to fulfill his
A rally held by opposition parties yesterday demonstrates that Taiwan is a democratic country, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, adding that if opposition parties really want to fight dictatorship, they should fight it on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) held a protest with the theme “against green communists and dictatorship,” and was joined by the Taiwan People’s Party. Lai said the opposition parties are against what they called the “green communists,” but do not fight against the “Chinese communists,” adding that if they really want to fight dictatorship, they should go to the right place and face
A 79-year-old woman died today after being struck by a train at a level crossing in Taoyuan, police said. The woman, identified by her surname Wang (王), crossed the tracks even though the barriers were down in Jhongli District’s (中壢) Neili (內壢) area, the Taoyuan Branch of the Railway Police Bureau said. Surveillance footage showed that the railway barriers were lowered when Wang entered the crossing, but why she ventured onto the track remains under investigation, the police said. Police said they received a report of an incident at 6:41am involving local train No. 2133 that was heading from Keelung to Chiayi City. Investigators
RSS