Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education has decided to provide free text books in Braille to all visually impaired students in the state. This was disclosed by Prof. CL Gupta, chairman of the Board while presiding over a seminar on “Rights of the Disabled: Role of Society”, organized by Shimla Study Circle of Panchnad Research Institute in Himachal Pradesh University. Journalist-turned professor and prominent disability rights activist Ajai Srivastava was the main speaker on this occasion.

In his letter dated May 18, 2009, the Hon. President of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) writes to the government for empowering visually challenged chartered accountants. This letter, addressed to the Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, is considered to be a great gesture by visually impaired persons. The letter, in its entirety, is produced below:

No.1-CA(RepCom)/2009
May 18, 2009

When you don’t have any other option, you’ve got to find some way to survive,” says this 35-year-old originally from Kanpur, who refuses to romanticise his life story.

The Birla Industrial & Technological Meseum (BITM) has recently inaugurated a special gallery in Kolkata for the visually-impaired to make them aware about the heavenly bodies.

“A world of darkness” — as the name suggests, the gallery provides a detailed description of the cosmos, including the solar system, the Milky Way, the pole stars, the Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Ursa Major and also the 12 zodiac signs.

Anuj Goel’s eyes hurt. But he kept pushing himself, trying to prove that he could do it. It wasn’t easy sitting in the front row for the visually impaired student — he strained his eyes to make out the letters on the blackboard, peering through his thick glasses.

Friday’s CBSE results showed all his pains were worth the effort: Goel not only stood first among 1,034 disabled students who took the examinations, he was also the topper among government school students.

His score: 96.7 per cent.

For 12-year-old Avinash, a visually impaired student of an MCD school in Jahangirpuri,  it was smooth sailing from classes I to IV.

But since two years, he has been stuck in Class V, as his promotion now is based on performance.

“What could he do? All four years he just came to school and went back and could do nothing,” says lawyer Ashok Aggarwal.

He is pleading in the High Court for a direction to government and MCD schools to appoint special teachers for differently-abled students.

Roger Behm lost his sight at 16, the victim of an inherited disease that destroyed his retinas. Both of his eyes were surgically removed.

Now 55, Behm has made himself at home in a sightless world. He started his own business in Janesville selling devices that help the blind cope with day-to-day tasks. He and his wife have raised five children and just adopted another child from China who is also blind. He fishes, canoes, camps and scuba dives.

Adding another feature to its effort for making the admission process a lot more student-friendly for the differently-abled candidates, Delhi University this year has introduced JAWS computer software for the benefit of visually challenged applicants.

JAWS is a software programme designed to work with a speech synthesiser, converting an ordinary computer into a talking computer.

Last year, the University had introduced Braille forms to enable the visually impaired to “feel” the form, even though their admission applications were filled by the student counsellors.