BENGALURU: Among the 932 partcipants at Bengaluru 2017 Walk, an annual walkathon held in January, was Sowmya K Bhaskar, a human resource manager from Bengaluru who recently moved to Hyderabad. Being 90 per cent blind, Sowmya has crossed out walkathon from her bucket list as she completed a 50 km trail from Nandi Hills in 17 hours along with three of her colleagues.

Sowmya K Bhaskar along with her
team at the walkathon

A one- day consultation as part of Voluntary National Review on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) was held here by international development organisation Sightsavers. The consultation was attended by more than 50 representatives of disability networks and groups working across the State. This year the progress on SDGs was reviewed. It addressed the concerns and voices of the persons with disabilities (PWDs) in the implementation of these global commitments and timeline.

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said it has registered 321 visually impaired candidates for the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

The Head, JAMB Information and Media, Dr Fabian Benjamin, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday  in Bwari.

Benjamin said that the figure was higher than the 201 candidates registered for the examination in 2016.

He said that adequate arrangement has been made for the visually impaired candidates to participate fully in the forthcoming UTME.

The National Mobile Service Provider, Mobitel plans to bring the light of joy to the visually impaired in the country during the Vesak season with the introduction of the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform to enable users to listen to the stories on display on five prominent Vesak Pandals in Colombo this year.

Users can call the short code 565 from any Mobitel number to listen to the stories free of charge from May 10 to 20, 2017.

Activists term situation ‘unfortunate’

The three-year action agenda document recently released by NITI Aayog is inaccessible to the visually impaired and those who use assistive technology for reading, say activists.

The plan proposes several policy changes for short-term implementation in India, and covers sectors such as agriculture, industry and manufacturing.

Beyond reach

The document available on the organisation’s website, however, is inaccessible to many.

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