La. Association for the Blind entering the printing business

A new building and high-tech printers will help the Louisiana Association for the Blind create jobs in Shreveport. The new commercial printing business is part of the 85-year-old organization’s plan to diversify its job training programs for the visually impaired. President and CEO Shelly Taylor tells The Shreveport Times the association expects to move into the 29,000-square-foot building in about a year. LAB wants to replace manufacturing programs leftover from a paper-driven era. “Index card and [paper] table manufacturing are going downhill,” Taylor says. The organization also is trying to broaden its customer base. The federal government has been LAB’s primary printing customer, but Taylor says the recession and government budget cuts prompted LAB to look for new income sources. Taylor expects the print shop and new manufacturing programs to create up to 20 permanent jobs for blind people. The printers will include adaptive software so people with little or no vision can set up and run print jobs using content provided by a graphic designer. LAB originally invested in the new printers after administrators realized it would be less expensive to print labels and other materials in-house. The print shop now turns out labels on demand, eliminating a two- or three-week wait for shipping from an out-of-state printing company. Read the full story here.