The National’s Sport cover for the Sunday, October 12 issue, featuring Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing’s Azzam as the 2014/15 Volvo Ocean Race kicks out from Alicante, Spain.
Steve Elling, reporting from Spain, sums up the spirit of the event as it starts: "Azzam and her skipper are floating testament to the VOR volatility. Three years ago, a mere six hours into a nine-month event, the boat's mast shattered like the lead in a No 2 pencil.
“Three years earlier, Walker’s boat clipped a whale off the coast of Brazil in the first leg.
“As the opening chapter of the 72,000-kilometre marathon began, the moral to the story was already written: something other than the tacking is sure to go sideways.
“‘You will see everything you could ever imagine, weather-wise, sea-wise,’ said Azzam crewman Justin Slattery.”
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The biog
Fatima Al Darmaki is an Emirati widow with three children
She has received 46 certificates of appreciation and excellence throughout her career
She won the 'ideal mother' category at the Minister of Interior Awards for Excellence
Her favourite food is Harees, a slow-cooked porridge-like dish made from boiled wheat berries mixed with chicken
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
How Voiss turns words to speech
The device has a screen reader or software that monitors what happens on the screen
The screen reader sends the text to the speech synthesiser
This converts to audio whatever it receives from screen reader, so the person can hear what is happening on the screen
A VOISS computer costs between $200 and $250 depending on memory card capacity that ranges from 32GB to 128GB
The speech synthesisers VOISS develops are free
Subsequent computer versions will include improvements such as wireless keyboards
Arabic voice in affordable talking computer to be added next year to English, Portuguese, and Spanish synthesiser
Partnerships planned during Expo 2020 Dubai to add more languages
At least 2.2 billion people globally have a vision impairment or blindness
More than 90 per cent live in developing countries
The Long-term aim of VOISS to reach the technology to people in poor countries with workshops that teach them to build their own device
