As a blind person I regularly make use of charitable organisations, some national, some regional, and some local. The services these charities offer vary between rehabilitation, local courses, audiobooks or even assistance in filling out complex forms to apply for benefits and similar. Other organisations that need donations to survive are probably less obvious. They are providers of software applications for computers and portable applications, or even the add-ons to make them work in particular ways to sort out your problems. The screen reader NVDA is one such application that a lot of blind and visually impaired people use on a daily basis, and they probably also use a lot of add-ons to make life even easier for themselves.
Donations can be taken by these organisations in various different ways. Some are very obvious as they have a donate button on their website though the more technical the organisation or person asking for donations probably have a donate button or a specific link within the application. Some organisations use a lottery format to entice people to donate but these incur costs that mean only a small percentage of what you are investing actually gets to the charity in question.
Another form of donation is by leaving a contribution in your Will as a legacy, though this could lead to a more generous donation you do not know what the organisations status will be when you pass away. Some charities actually need the donation now rather than in 20 or 30 years time.
An interesting way of donating to a company that is developing products to be used by the blind and visually impaired users is to search out the appropriate companies on the websites like “Just Giving” where you will find them asking for donations in their development phase. Depending on how much you donate you will probably find there is an incentive such as when the product is released you will get it at a discounted price or benefits of gifts that go with the final product. This is a gamble but if you believe the product would be of benefit it is a good idea to encourage the developer in their efforts.
I had the idea of writing this article because recently an organisation I have been donating to for a few years of which I assume most of you have heard of, calibre audiobooks, have not been receiving as good a response as they needed to their requests for donations they have had to temporarily go back to a subscription model to fund the organisation.
