AUDIOBOOK INCLUSION PROJECT NEEDS YOUR HELP

PROSOM, A UNIVERSITY INCLUSION RESEARCH PROJECT WITH 11 PUBLISHED AUDIOBOOKS, IS ABOUT TO CLOSE.

I have coordinated the PRO.SOM Project, Translation, Creation Process and Sound Media, since 2006, when I suffered a serious retinal problem. As soon as I returned to my classes at UFBA, the Federal University of Bahia, where I have worked as a Full Professor, I launched an audiobook project. Since I had benefitted from listening to dozen audiobooks, I decided to work with the production of sound media in order to help people with handicaps. PRO.SOM received a public bid in 2011 from the University Extension Program, which allowed us to construct a sound studio at the Institute of Letters. We have already published 11 audiobooks; five more are ready and waiting to be launched by EDUFBA (UFBA Publishing House). The published audiobooks can be heard via streaming on our website https://intervozes.com.br/publicacoes/audiolivros/; or the printed scripts and audios on cd can be acquired through EDUFBA. Our Project has distributed 100 out of the 400 copies of each published audiobook to Institutes for the Blind throughout Brazil. Among these literary works scripted for audiobooks, many of them have been translated from English and some from German by students of the Institute of Letters, then adapted for sound media and recorded by pupils from UFBA Drama School.

We have also recorded two audiobooks with culinary recipes written and tested by people with visual handicap from a Center for the Support of Handicapped People in Salvador (CAP). We have recorded two audiobooks for the project “Embrace Microcephaly” to help parents with children affected by such congenital malformation and who are often illiterate. THE IMAGE CHOSEN TO REPRESENT THIS PROJECT IS THE COVER OF “3 Vivas para o bebê!!!”, which can be translated to “THREE CHEERS FOR THE BABY!!!”, the first of the audiobooks we recorded for this project. We are translating, at the moment, two books from Macmillan Publishing Company from English to Portuguese to support parents of children with cancer (in partnership with Martagão Gesteira Hospital). But the problem is that our equipment is old and EDUFBA has suffered from budget cuts, which are influencing our capacity to publish. Without the necessary funds to maintain our equipment and purchase new ones that allow us to go on working and publishing, the project becomes UNVIABLE. For this reason, we are asking for help from those who believe that WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN PEOPLE’S LIVES.

Silvia Maria Guerra Anastacio

Full Professor at the Federal University of Bahia