lection Commission (EC) in Odisha, in its initiative to encourage physically handicapped people to vote in large numbers, has roped in national blind cricket team captain Md Jafar Iqbal as its 'icon'.

"The celebrity blind cricketer would encourage blind voters to exercise their franchise," an official at the Cuttack District Election Office said here, adding that special ballot papers had been prepared for this purpose.

The icon would also participate in workshops where he would interact with the blind voters who are not familiar with Braille, the official said.

A visually impaired student met a watery grave in a pond of Suvarnamukhi temple near Bannerghatta where he had gone for a bath on Wednesday.

The deceased S. Nagraj (21), a resident of Tiptur, was a second year pre-university student in a city-based college and was staying at a hostel for visually impaired students near Bannerghatta.Nagraj along with his friends went to the Suvarnamukhi temple to pray and later to bathe in the pond near the temple .

Blind and visually impaired users called for greater efforts to increase accessibility of digital media and for more research and development efforts. At the Arab region’s first technology summit for people who are blind or visually impaired, the community said that public and private sector organisations need to do more to make their websites fully accessible to people with a disabilities.

The meeting was organised by Mada, the Qatar Assistive Technology Centre, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Doha.

Being a member of the erstwhile drafting committee for the Rights of People with Disabilities Bill 2012, I can testify to its stand that ‘it cannot be made perfect as every process involves breaking something else’. That was our guiding principle while drafting the Bill — one that was been jinxed from the beginning given the ups and downs with regard to opinions about it within the sector.