The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Efforts needed to provide education to visually challenged persons

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 08, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Efforts needed to provide education to visually challenged persons

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, NOV.7. The Chairman, Madras Institute of Development Studies, M.Anandakrishnan, today called for dedicated and concerted efforts by society as a whole to solve problems related to providing literacy, education and skills to visually challenged persons, as the Government would not be able to do this alone.

Presiding over a function, where the second phase of the National Initiative for the Blind (NIFB) was launched, he said a multi-pronged approach and a multi-layered solution was necessary to meet the educational needs of the visually-challenged in the country, as their number had risen from 1.5 million in 1940 to 13 million now. Around 20 per cent of them studied in several educational institutions from primary schools to colleges, he pointed out.

He appealed to the managements of educational institutions and industries to support the setting up of disability resource centres with one or two centres in each district by next year. They could become multi-purpose centres to prepare text material for some of the subjects taught in schools, he felt.

Dr.Anandakrishnan commended the Vidya Vrikshah and Worth Trust for taking up the initiative, which had become successful, due to the use of technology. In this connection, he appealed to the Indian Institute of Technology , Chennai, which had evolved the national online braille service for printing text books in Indian languages for visually-challenged students, to obtain "copyright for this unique product."

It was a wrong impression that only the use of computers would solve the learning problems of the blind, he said, adding that the ultimate goal must be to make them productive individuals by bringing out their full potential.

`Wealth of material'

N.Ravi, Editor of The Hindu , said the wealth of material available on the Internet could, with the appropriate equipment and software, be of immense value to the visually challenged. "Yet, mere technology will not help without developing learning material, without converting the existing books into the appropriate braille and voice format. The involvement of student and adult volunteers in this task is perhaps the most significant aspect of this noble endeavour," he said.

The old attitude of treating people with disabilities as a matter of charity had given way to the idea that it was society's obligation to enable them to develop to their full potential. "Indeed a society's attitude to the disabled came to be seen as an index of its caring and sensitivity," he said. The second phase of the NIFB was an extremely well-thought out and executed programme to ensure that the enormous talents of the differently-abled persons were tapped through special means to greatly enrich society. The managing trustee of Vidya Vriksha, N.Krishnaswamy, attributed the success of the first phase of the national initiative to the dedicated work by the students. A total of 1000 universal braille kits would be distributed to 230 blind schools across the country. The visually challenged students made their presentation on using braille cube, braille block, alphabet plate, braille slate, abacus and geometry box at the function.

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