About Us

 Sao Mai Center for the Blind (SMCB) was established in 2001, registered as a non-profit organization based in Vietnam.

Our Mission

We work to empower the blind people for their fully and equally participating into the society by promoting the research, development and application of assistive technology in education, employment and daily living activities.

We provide assistive products, accessible materials, technology trainings. We also work for vocational, job training and placement.

Some of our notable achievements

• Supported to establish 26 computer labs at local organizations for/of the blind in 23 provinces/cities throughout the country. Trained more than 400 technology technicians/trainers and over 3,500 visually impaired people.
• The Center has been working and networking not only with in-country partner organizations but also with organizations from other regions. Some of those regional collaboration programs were: In 2007, the Center provided an advanced training for nine trainers from the region coming from Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand; In 2013, training twelve computer trainers for Myanmar; From 2016-2018, developed the SM Myanmar TTS for Burmese language on both Android and Windows etc.
• Most of our products such as Sao Mai VNVoice Vietnamese speech engine, standalone talking software, technology books/training curriculum... have been the main tools and resources for blind individuals and organizations in Vietnam.
• Built an online accessible book library with about 10,000 titles, which are mostly educational books.
• Through the TNF-ICEVI Higher Education Support project: much improved the equal access to higher education of visually impaired students by addressing challenges such as unfriendly campus environment, university faculties'/sighted classmates' attitudes, providing blind students on-time/accessible academic materials, equipment support, scholarships, soft skills, vocational activities.
• 229 blind individuals successfully referred to work at different sectors from 2014-2022.
• Our newly-developed software, including Sao Mai Braille, SM Music Braille, SM Music Reader, are not only being used widely in Vietnam, but also have a large number of users around the world.

Please watch our 14-minute we produced to celebrate the 15th anniversary to know more about our works in that first 15 year period (2001-2016).

If the video above doesn't work, please open directly from this Youtube link: https://youtu.be/xjh4_KGdXIo