By the time Wong Ka-ho, 20, completed his A-levels this year, the young blind man had amassed 13 boxes of Braille textbooks for just four subjects. The books - 10 of which are needed to reproduce an average textbook - were back-breaking to carry to school.
But then electronic books came along and transformed his heavy load into a few dozen files saved on a single USB drive.
Wong, who attends a mainstream school, was the first pupil to benefit from a Hong Kong Blind Union pilot scheme launched last May that converts textbooks into e-books that can read text aloud or can display Braille text electronically.
The project - which lasts two years - received HK$3.8 million from the government's Quality Education Fund, as part of its effort to back innovative education projects. Outgoing chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen outlined in his final annual policy address plans to promote e-learning in schools.
Wong found it difficult to catch up with his classmates, as it was time-consuming to convert textbook material into Braille. He asked classmates to record the text with their voices, but worried about appearing bothersome.
'The biggest difference with e-books is I can take notes now,' Yeung said. 'In the past, we could not take notes in our Braille books because they did not belong to us, therefore we could not bookmark key points.