Blind & Vision Rehabilitation Services of Pittsburgh is preparing to consolidate its operations under one Uptown roof — and place a community garden, trees and dog park on the rooftop.
“We really believe the new building is going to increase the number of people who go through the (organization's Personal Adjustment to Blindness) program,” said President Erika Arbogast.
This step has been taken by the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) and Minister of School Education, Vinod Tawde, with the view of bringing about changes for students with special needs in the state.
The Uttarakhand division of Archaeological Survey of India is adding a new section on its website, complete with voice commands and recorded narration, to allow visually impaired users to access information on heritage sites of the hill state. The move by the Uttarakhand division of ASI, also known as Dehradun Circle, is a first across the archaeological circles in the country.
The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, which comes under the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, does not have any information on the employment among the disabled persons in the country, according to a reply to a query filed by The Indian Express under the Right to Information (RTI) Act in September last year.
“Information related to the percentage of employment of disabled persons is not available,” the RTI reply says.
Mention the words ‘practice session’ and it conjures up image of players in coloured clothes, photo-op for fans or the air of pre-match excitement. And if you were at the cricket stadium near Aluva, which currently hosts the practice sessions of a national team, your applause would resound a lot louder when the players stepped on to the ground.
Do the blind live in a world of darkness? Or is theirs an imaginary world with visuals? Some, especially those who’ve been born blind, have stated that their world is indeed dark and visuals are at times thrust on them. Others, like Shakila Maharaj, one of the delegates at Hyderabad Literary Festival 2016, talk about an imaginary world that’s far from dark.
In India, the people with disabilities are addressed by many denominations interchangeably. Since the mid-1980s, patronising terms such as “differently abled” and “specially abled” have been quite common in public parlance. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his last Mann ki Baat, broadcast on December 27, 2015, appealed to the public to adopt the use of the term “divyang” (divine body) to address persons with disabilities.
As many as 1.16 lakh eye patients were examined and 12,534 patients’ eyes were operated upon in Sewa Sadan Eye Hospital during calendar year 2015.
These include 4,463 paid cataract surgeries, 74 glaucoma, 22 squint, 272 surgeries of diabetic retinopathy disease and 7,607 free cataract surgeries.
Notably, the Medical Director and Senior Ophthalmologist Dr Prerna Upadhyaya has transplanted cornea to 96 visually impaired patients in this period. This achievement is highest than any other eye hospital based in central India region of the State.
At Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, a clinical trial is taking place in which six patients who have had little or no sight for many years are having a cutting-edge "bionic eye" implanted in an attempt to give them some sight, and independence, back. The first patient in this trial is 49-year-old Rhian Lewis, from Cardiff. She explains: "I was a toddler when my parents noticed I would not cross a darkened room, even from one light room to another light room, and that I was really scared of the dark.
Facebook comments