Ada Derana changes logo to Braille as ‘Comprehension only dawns when you go blind’

On 13 October, the whole world commemorated World Sight Day which saw several campaigns and projects happening around the world to increase awareness about the importance of donating eyes to the needy, after we no longer need ours. It is estimated that over 285 million people are visually impaired across the world while 200,000 people in Sri Lanka are believed to be blind and these numbers are on the rise thereby making the need for awareness a critical one.

The Blind Walk is one such campaign which was organised by The Project Vision in Bangalore, India which organised a Blind Walk which was held concurrently in four countries – the USA, China, India and Sri Lanka. The concept of the Blind Walk has become a very meaningful program to promote the donation of eyes. The idea behind it is to give people the experience of being blind, where people with vision can experience the very demanding challenge of being visually impaired thereby spurring them to help create awareness about this cause.

In a first for Sri Lanka and probably the world, Ada Derana changed its logo to a Braille font with the message ‘Blind to comprehension while you have sight – Comprehension only dawns when you go blind’.

Speaking about this initiative Ada Derana Executive Director/COO Madhawa Madawala said, “We only realise the value of sight after we lose it. Given that blindness is on the rise around the world, eye donations are urgently required and we were determined to play whatever role we could to raise awareness of this plight. We felt that changing our logo to a braille font would surprise our thousands of visitors to Ada Derana and thereby help to spread our message to everyone with sight.

Thariq Thulba, Past District Governor of Rotary, and the Chairman of the organising committee thanked Ada Derana for coming on board to support this cause saying that he appreciated media organisations getting involved in projects such as this and urged other media outlets to support this initiative as well.