CHENNAI: In January 2017, when we met Vasanth Raghuvir, managing trustee of the Shakti Foundation ahead of their 27th annual fundraiser concert, she shared a positive observation with CE, “The ‘pity factor’ towards persons with disabilities (PwD) is slowly fading away. Another perceptible advancement is that a lot of young PwDs have got married to able-bodied persons. They share work, run households and also work. Acceptance is slowly growing in society. It’s not sympathy that they need but empathy.”

From poorly trained teachers to lack of accessible reading materials, the exclusion faced children who are visually impaired is evident in multiple ways.

It also denies them the freedom of pursuing subjects of their choice, especially those that rely on the use of diagrams or images, like science, maths and geography.

Something law student Maitreya Shah was acutely aware of right through his years in school.

Be it booking a cab to ordering your weekly supply of vegetables, Paytm is used by many people in India, and has emerged very quickly as one of India’s leading mobile payment companies. It's tagline of Paytm Karo promises a hassle free experience to users across the board.

Not all users, however, with many blind and low vision people reporting that the app was inaccessible, an issue that NewzHook has reported on extensively.

It is often difficult for the visually impaired people to identify the denomination of the currency note.  To assist them easily determine denomination of INR currency notes, a team from IIT Ropar, Punjab has developed an Android App “Roshni”, using image processing and analytics.

The panicky father of a 40 per cent visually impaired boy arrived in the national capital from Kaithal in Haryana Tuesday morning to meet disability rights activists. Unwilling to give out his name, the man said he fears his son, studying in Class 12, might not be able to take the medical entrance exam in absence of final guidelines from the Medical Council of India (MCI) for persons with disabilities.