A workshop was organised in the city to craft tactile study material on computer, diagrams and geographical maps for visually impaired students
BHUBANESWAR: National Federation of Blind observes White Cane Safety Day to celebrate the achievements of visually impaired people October 15 every year. The white cane is vital in the life of such an individual as it helps them with swift mobility.
White cane has been used as a symbol of independent travellers since decades. There have been quite a lot of innovations in recent times to assist visually impaired people in various tasks such as studying and typing. However, due to lack of these technological advancements in the state, there is a paucity of awareness on the matter.
Knowledge is a blessing which has the power to eradicate every issue related to ignorance. In order to create awareness among blind students about new software, WE4YOU, an organisation which provides “AudioBooks” since 2013, organised a workshop to craft tactile study materials on computer, diagrams and geographical maps for visually impaired students.
Abhaya Mohanta of We4You said, “There is software available for blind students. However, students of the state have not been initiated to the software. We are also producing few tactile and Braille materials for the visually impaired. We have given them various tactile materials of computer courses like Microsoft word excel. They touch the tactile materials and feel how a word or excel sheet looks like. They learn computer by touching the. They also use screen reader software.”
“There are around 39 million blind people all over the world. India is house to 12 million among them. Odisha alone has a rough count of two lakh visually impaired people. Ever since the beginning, the root cause of disability has been illiteracy or ignorance. Hence, in order to avoid that, the government has been undertaking numerous steps to eradicate the issue by educating the masses,” he added.
Unfortunately, even after multiple trials, all efforts of the government seem to go in vain. Paucity of Braille books producing companies in our country has created a huge gap in the education of normal people and the visually impaired. So, to bridge the gap, audio and tactile books came into the picture but again availability of these modern-day education teaching methodologies is scarce in our state leading to lesser education rate and employability of visually impaired people. On the other hand, visually impaired people in other states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu cope with the competition due to exposure and abundant availability of tactile material and audio books.
WE4YOU records books in multiple dialects and spreads these in 19 different states of the country through various platforms like Sugamya Pustakalaya or YouTube. Around 15000 students have benefitted from the AudioBooks produced by WE4YOU. The organisation is working towards creation of Tactile Books to provide the students of Odisha a wider educational aspect which could not be fulfilled by the Audiobooks. Tactile books consist of the pictorial presentation of the image contents in the books. We are even helping the visually impaired students in getting employed by providing them quality vocational training like personality development, spoken English and computer courses among others.
State lags behind
- Despite a number of technological innovations to deal with visual impairment, the state lags behind in terms of availability of such tech
- As a result, visually impaired people in the state are less aware of these trends which hampers their education and employment opportunities
