Background of the project:The World Health Organisation estimates, in figures dating from 2010, that in Europe there are 26.350.000 visually impaired individuals.Looking at the data of the participating countries: there are 12.500 visually impaired in Slovenia, 645.000 in Germany and 25.000 in Croatia.Visually impaired Europeans are undoubtedly among the most vulnerable and least visible members of society. For the most part they are at the bottom end of the earnings league. Poverty and social exclusion are inextricably linked and are caused by a complex combination of factors: poor education and housing, unemployment, inaccessible information, negative attitudes and prejudices... The success of visually impaired is highly determined by the level of their personal readiness and motivation, by the environment, as well as the level of technical support they have access to. Visually impaired lack the technological support, which would help them use the audio materials without the support of librarians, mentors and family members; while librarians should be specially trained, especially for part of human communication with users. Objectives of the project:- To Increase the accessibility of learning materials and literature for the visually impaired by providing free and independent access to them - To equip librarians / mentors of visually impaired with the knowledge, skills and competences to be able to support the use of the Audibook library for visually impaired Direct target groups of the projects are:- Associations and organizations for visually impaired in participating countries as well as all over EU, who need and wish to provide improved access to educational materials and literature to visually impaired. Indirect target groups are:- Other audiobooks copyright holders, who lack safety arrangements in the existing platforms in order to be willing to share their books.- Other educational organizations, who lack a safe and easy to use tool to share their learning materials among theirs students.End users are:- Visually impaired, who are in need to obtain easy and completely independent access to the learning materials and literature.- Librarians / mentors who work with visually impaired, who lack sufficient knowledge, skills and competence to support the use of the new technical tool for the visually impaired.Around 400 of the target groups will be directly included in the project implementation.Main project activities will lead to the develop the following intellectual outputs:1.Web platform “Second Sight”Development of an online platform for organizations for the blind and partially sighted, publishers, educational organizations and other copyright holders on existing audio recordings that want to grant free access to the existing audio books to the visually impaired through the »Audibook Library for Visually Impaired« mobile application. The web platform opens a channel to these entities, through which, without any costs, they can offer the audiobooks to the target audience (blind and partially sighted), without any fear that the book will copied and shared to the people who is not in titled to the free access. 2.Mobile application “Audibooks Library for the Visually Impaired”“Audibook Library for Visually Impaired” is a library for the blind and partially sighted, which enables them to fully and independently browse and read the available audio materials due to the voice management of the mobile application and on the spot available voice support in case of any troubles. The download of the mobile application and all audio books and learning materials within the mobile application is enabled (and free of charge) to all who show their status as blind or partially sighted with appropriate documents.3.Training programme and learning materials for librarians / mentors for visually impairedTraining of librarians and mentors who work with visually impaired will include transfer of knowledge, skills and competences that they need to motivate, educate and support the end users to use the new tool.Project will start with the web platform development, which is the basis for the mobile app development. Both IO will be tested and evaluated by the visually impaired and librarians /mentors. After finalization of the mobile application, the training programme and learning materials for the librarians / mentors will be developed, tested and finalized based on the evaluation findings.Project will contribute to:- Improved access to the learning materials and books for the visually impaired- Increased use of the audio books by the visually impaired - Improved social inclusion of the visually impaired- Improved knowledge, skills and competences of the librarians / mentors of visually impaired.