Make an idea a reality.

The universe is full of colours. If we are fortunate enough to appreciate them, we can see more than 30,000 colours. And we cannot only see them, we are also guided by them. They help us communicate and understand the world around us. Still, we all know someone who suffers from some kind of visual impairment that prevents them from perceiving colours fully or partially. Even if we don’t, it’s not hard to imagine how it feels.

Visually impaired people are not only blind people, but also those who are colour blind, partially sighted, have cataracts, glaucoma, or low vision: people who deal with obstacles every day. Actually, it’s pretty easy to think about the number of simple daily tasks we perform that require visual sense and colour recognition. Choosing an outfit, going to school, driving and working, using public transport, taking pills or eating; basically living. As kids, we learn to play with coloured blocks, to paint blue skies and white clouds and to eat all those green vegetables.

So, if you are not able to see colours, how do you do all these basic things?

Filipa Nogueira Pires from Lisbon tells ECO123 that “under normal circumstances, when you are visually impaired, you still can hear, taste, smell and feel. I believe that colour is for everyone. That’s why we created a change-making code that empowers the visually impaired to be able to identify colours. It is through the combination of colours and shapes which they can feel thanks to a relief in the shapes. It’s about inclusion, changing society and bringing quality of life to those who just see the world in a different way. By using it, we believe we can improve the daily tasks of the visually impaired, stop discrimination and change the paradigm.”

About the author

Uwe Heitkamp, 53 years old, started working after university in daily newspapers and from 1984 on in public tv broadcasting companies such as WDR (Collogne), NDR (Hamburg), SDR (Stuttgart/Baden-Baden) in the ARD (first programme), wrote several books and directed the cinema movie about the anti nuclear movement in Germany in 1986 (Wackersdorf). After emigration in 1990 he founded 1995 the trilingual weekly printed newspaper “Algarve123”  and later the online edition www.algarve123.com. Heitkamp lives for 25 year in Monchique, Portugal. He loves mountain hiking and swimming in streams and lakes, writes and tells stories of success from people and their sustainable relationship between ecology and economy. His actual film “Revolutionary Roads” tells the 60 minute story of a long walk crossing Portugal. 10 rural people paint a picture of their lives in the hills of the serra and the hinterland. The film captures profound impressions of natural beauty and human life. Along which path is the future of Portugal to be found? (subscribe to ECO123 und watch the documentary in the Mediatec)