LG Uplus Produces 16,000 Pages of eBooks for Visually Impaired Users

Production of Over 80 Braille Electronic Books... Goal to Produce a Total of Over 160 Books Within the Year

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunmo Koo] LG Uplus announced on the 14th that it has produced approximately 16,000 pages of e-books for the visually impaired over four months through its ‘U+ Hope Books’ initiative, which creates electronic books (e-books) for the visually impaired. E-books for the visually impaired are alternative books that represent regular books in formats such as braille files.

To address the shortage of braille books, LG Uplus started the social contribution activity ‘U+ Hope Books’ in March, utilizing the program of the disability support organization ‘IT Open Library’ to produce e-books for the visually impaired. More than 400 participants joined, reducing the production time per e-book from seven months to one week.

Through this effort, visually impaired individuals were able to newly read over 80 e-books in the first half of the year alone. This volume corresponds to what would have required more than 10 years (140 months) at the previous production speed for e-books for the visually impaired. Notably, popular books with high sales this year such as ‘Civilization 1 (Bernard Werber)’ and steady sellers like ‘What Death Told Life (Kim Beomseok)’ were introduced as e-books, which is expected to help bridge the cultural gap with non-disabled people.

Gam Yujeong, a manager of LG Uplus Group Sales Team 3 who participated in the e-book production process, said, “I joined because I realized that a small task like proofreading books can mean a great cultural activity to someone,” adding, “Since it can be comfortably done at home on a PC, I plan to continue participating whenever I have time.”

LG Uplus plans to produce an additional 80 e-books for the visually impaired in the second half of the year, creating a total of about 160 titles by the end of the year. The completed e-books will be delivered to ‘IT Open Library’ and the ‘National Library for the Disabled’ to be provided free of charge to the visually impaired.

Baek Yongdae, head of LG Uplus CSR Team, said, “Although the e-book service for the visually impaired has been introduced, it took a long time from requesting desired books to completing production, which reduced its effectiveness. We aimed to improve this,” and added, “We hope that the U+ Hope Books initiative will contribute to ensuring that visually impaired people have the right to freely read various new releases and bestsellers.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.