Despite the significant push from rights organisations, the Disability Rights Bill was not taken up in the latest Parliament session.

This Bill, an improvement over the 1995 law, provides a comprehensive definition of disability, more rights, and an increase in the quota from 3 per cent to 5 per cent in Government jobs. The Bill, upon becoming an Act, will come as a shot in the arm for those with disabilities.

 
MIT Media Lab has released a video demonstrating wearable technology that could help people with visual impairments read more easily.

Wearers of “FingerReader” move their fingers over words on a page, and the device reads the text back to them. “The FingerReader algorithm knows to detect and give feedback when the user veers away from the baseline of the text,” according to its website.

Last week, in the centre of a crammed Goregaon office, a skull served as a soft toy. People patted its blue head on the way to their desks and returned its toothy smile. Despite having two holes for eyes, no cheeks and a jaw held together by rubberbands, it looked inviting. Each part of its face boasted braille letters, so when the visually impaired Bhavesh Shah ran his fingers across its yellow forehead, he could tell it was the "frontal lobe."

The Winter Paralympics started in 1976 in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden featuring 198 athletes from 16 countries.

The Games featured alpine and Nordic skiing for amputee and visually impaired athletes and a demonstration event in sledge racing.

The 2014 Winter Paralympics run from 7-16 March in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi - the first time that a Paralympic Games has been held in Russia and is expected to feature over 600 athletes from 44 countries.

According to some estimates India has almost 70 million people living with some form of disability, but hardly 1 per cent of them are employed. Ankit Rajiv Jindal, marketing manager at Wipro in Bangalore, shrugs off his impairment as easily as he carries off his skills.

Jindal can rattle off targets without looking once at the presentation and can strategise and plan and reel off numbers. He is 90 per cent blind but he shrugs off his impairment as easily as he carries off his skills.