Due to the previous post, we have started a discussion about the fear of self-expression through the maintenance of a blog

The solution was obvious; Blind Dates blog has been created and you can visit it in http://theblinddates.wordpress.com/

The first 8 articles have been posted, divided in 4 categories; Announcements, News, Learn How, Opinion Articles. In the first category, you can find announcements made by Panhellenic Association for the Blind and Thessaloniki School for the Blind. In the second category, participants can share with readers news about the Blind, like technological innovations or new legislations. The third category, Learn How, incudes articles about how visually impaired people manage to deal with everyday life activities, like the use of the computer. The “Learn How” category is a good way to update the blog by posting short articles, easy to be written by participants. The fourth category, opinion articles, is maybe the most important category because meets the upper goal of the project which is the self-expression of the participants. There is only one article in this category so far, by a participant who wrote about the stories of three famous blind people who have inspired him.

In the beginning, many participants just posted articles, republications from other sites or newspapers. To motivate them write original posts, we encourage them to write short articles, in not so sophisticated articles about their everyday life for the category “Learn How” or we suggest them some topics, which they may find appealing to write for, depending on their interests. For example, one participant is a hip hop singer, so we suggested him to write about hip hop music.

The next step is to translate the articles in English with the help of Greek Global Voices volunteer translators and volunteers of the Panhellenic Association for the Blind.

Alexia Kalaitzi