The visually impaired IT expert selflessly helping the blind break through the digital barrier

Johnny Lui developed his own freeware to help people connect with the rest of the world – and all for free

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Johnny Lui has found it hard to find work and is disappointed people with disabilities account for only 2 per cent of civil service posts. Photo: Edmond So

Published: 4:20pm, 18 May 2016Updated: 4:20pm, 18 May 2016

For the visually impaired, it’s a challenge to use computers. Often, a combination of technologies is employed: speech synthesising software will read out the text, while an electromechanical braille terminal produces output for the fingers in the form of raised dots.

It’s even tougher for non-English-speakers, as such technological developments are mostly English-language based. Ten years ago, when Johnny Lui Chi-hung, whose own visual sense is limited to “light” and “dark”, realised Cantonese screen reader software cost almost HK$20,000, he developed his own freeware, Johnny Tools, to help the visually impaired in Hong Kong.

Over the years, he’s continued to update Johnny Tools in his own time. For example, while for most of us translating a text is just a matter of copying from one page and pasting into another, it’s more complicated for those who can’t visually locate the text and translator text-box.

Now, Johnny Tools allows users to select and translate, with simple keyboard shortcuts, any text on the screen with ease.

He has done this all for free, only occasionally receiving donations for his hard work. The real reward for him is to hear the joy in people’s voices, of their newfound abilities to connect with the rest of the world.

Lui – who has been nominated by the Regeneration Society for an Innovating for Good Award in the South China Morning Post’s Spirit of Hong Kong Awards – lost his vision to a nerve disease just over two decades ago, in his late teens. Knowing now how hard he works, it’s amusing to think Lui’s younger sister had asked him then: “Are you just trying to get out of school and work?”