Renowned actor Naseeruddin Shah has strongly supported the telecast of a series on visually impaired and blind achievers on Doordarshan saying “people need to break away from the societal stereotypes and commonly held perceptions about disability and success or happiness.”
Today is White Cane Safety Day, a national observance set aside since 1964 to celebrate the achievements of people who are blind or visually impaired, and the important symbol of blindness and tool of independence, the white cane.
The mission of White Cane Day is to educate the world about blindness and how the blind and visually impaired can live and work independently while giving back to their communities; to celebrate the abilities and successes achieved by blind people in a sighted world; and to honor the many contributions begin made by the blind and visually impaired.
A wheelchair-bound para table tennis champion with a gold medal from Thailand Open 2013 has no job that the state can offer. The 31-year-old has to climb three floors to be coached for free in a private complex in Madurai.
Coaches in a government playground turned her away after she didn't have the money to pay them, she says. If it is difficult for people with disabilities to find a job, it's equally harrowing for those who did manage to get a job under the government quota.
Many employees were amazed with the skills and capabilities of the volunteers with visual impairment during the demos of these assistive aids
EMC India Center of Excellence (CoE) recently concluded an awareness workshop for its employees on assistive technologies for visually impaired individuals at its Bangalore campus.
The program targeted to create awareness and sensitize managers, hiring leads, leadership and other teams on visual impairment and how assistive technologies can help a person with visual impairment function successfully at work.
The Eastern Mediterranean region is home to the second largest number of people in the world with visual impairment, according to estimates.
There are a total of 285mn visually impaired people in the world - 246mn with low vision and 39mn are estimated to be blind.
About 90% of the world’s visually impaired live in developing countries while 80% of all visual impairment can be avoided or cured.
Also, 1.26mn children are blind and 19mn are visually impaired.
A photography exhibition questioning the conventional wisdom of 'vision' is currently on at the India International Centre featuring works by three international lensmen, all of whom, once sighted, are now completely blind.
The display, titled 'Vision Unseen', showcases seemingly impossible photographs shot by Frenchman Evgen Bavcar, US national Flo Fox and Kuniaki Ito from Japan.
Asif Iqbal is a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers; Sk Mozammal Haque a businessman; Raja Faiyaz and Subhasish Bandyopadhyay theatre activists. All of them are blind. They, along with sculptor Benode Behari Mukherjee who taught at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan, feature in a 13-episode television documentary conceived by a man who is also blind.
Upasana Makati who pioneered White Print, said to be the country’s first lifestyle Braille magazine in English
Pankaj Ghosal remembers the time, the exact day and date when his parents took him to visit Akshardham. "It was November11, 2010, a Thursday. We spent the entire day there," he recalls. It was the first time he had visited a place of historical importance. But being visually impaired, he understood little about the temple's grandeur or beauty. For him, visiting the temple was no different from visiting the neighborhood mall. It was spacious, crowded, a place to spend the day.
Competition encourages innovation in braille and tactile literacy for the blind
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