Following on from the recent Kent Mark Benevolent Fund donation to the Kent Association For The Blind (KAB) the Mark Benevolent Fund have agreed a grant of £8,440 to the Province’s premier charity for people with visual impairment.
KAB was founded in 1920 to support servicemen blinded in the first world war. Now in its 100th year it offers wider support for more than 12,000 visually impaired and blind people in Kent by providing equipment or rehabilitation to help them maintain their everyday lives.
To mark their 100th year they have launched an appeal to raise £103,000 for a new state of the art Mobile Sight Centre to allow them to reach 4,500 visually impaired and blind people not currently supported by the KAB team.
The Mobile Sight Centre will be equipped with cutting edge technology which will be used to demonstrate what equipment is available to improve the everyday lives of those who are visually impaired. This equipment will include a CCTV magnifier, a portable autoreader and a specialist wearable ‘OrCam’ camera that uses artificial intelligence to convert visual information into audio, see the above image.
The £8,440 grant will permit the charity to purchase demonstration equipment for use within the Mobile Sight Centre to allow those who are visually impaired to assess cutting edge equipment within a clinically safe environment before buying for use at home.