(Originally published on 05/17/2015)

Today, on China’s 25^th National Day for Helping Persons with Disabilities, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) joined with WeChat’s Voice Donor campaign to promote the rights of persons with disabilities by mobilising the public to crowd source voice recordings to produce audio books for people with visual impairment over WeChat.

UNDP presented several texts on legal rights for persons with disabilities, including the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, legal publications by the Ministry of Justice, and Invisible Rights, a publication jointly produced by the One Plus One (Beijing) Disabled Persons’ Cultural Development Center and Harvard Law School. Written entirely by people with visual impairments and produced by persons with disabilities, Invisible Rights provides a thorough explanation of the Convention and the rights and entitlements of people with visual impairments. It is a publication that reflects the core inclusive value of the Convention: ‘Nothing about us without us!

By participating in this campaign UNDP hopes to help community groups and the general public better understand the content of the Convention and raising public awareness of disability rights. UNDP works to promote respect for the rights and interests of people with disabilities, eliminating discrimination and prejudice.

In his opening remarks at the event, UNDP Deputy Country Director Patrick Haverman said, ‘We believe the Voice Donor project is not only a great example of applying technology and social innovation for social good in China, but also an initiative which coincides with an important year for United Nation’s work on persons with disabilities.’ He reiterated that improving social, economic and political inclusion for persons with disabilities is explicitly incorporated into the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The UN System and its national counterparts are looking forward to the adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda in September this year, which will prescribe global Sustainable Development Goals to reduce poverty and protect the environment.

As well as the Voice Donor project, UNDP also supports people with disabilities through cooperation with the Legal Aid Center of the Ministry of Justice, the China Disabled Persons’ Federation and other Disabled People's Organisations (DPOs). A series of training programmes are being run to improve legal aid providers’ understanding of the rights and entitlements of persons with disabilities, and there will be policy discussions on China’s laws and regulations related to disabled people. UNDP will continue its support in safeguarding the rights and entitlements of disabled people in China and promoting access to justice, so as to build a more equal and inclusive society.

Participate in the Voice Donor campaign

Fluent Chinese speakers can scan the QR code below and follow the Voice Donor public account on WeChat. After entering the menu, select “group recording” and enter the code “UNDP”. You will receive a short text from a list of selected books via the system and you can record accordingly using the “Hold to Talk” feature on WeChat. Share this account with friends and family!

WeChat will compile all the recordings and compose them into audio books. These audio books will be sent to the National Library of China, and donated to schools for persons with visual impairments and DPOs.

Since the campaign’s launch on May 18, 2014, the Voice Donor public account has already received 3 million audio clips and produced more than 100 audiobooks, benefitting an audience of more than 3 million people. These audiobooks have been sent to 100 schools in China, reaching out to more than 10,000 children with visual impairments across the nation.