Underground lifts, ramps, platforms thathave wheel chair access, toilets for the disabled—this is the Bombayhigh court’s vision to make railway platforms disabled friendly.     TheHC on Thursday sought a report on the facilities for disabled atrailway platforms in Mumbai. Hearing a public interest litigation onthe lack of such facilities, a division bench of Chief JusticeSwatanter Kumar and Justice V M Kanade asked lawyers Mihir Desai andSuresh Kumar to visit Mumbai Central station for verifying the groundreality at railway platforms.

The abacus method to calculate numbers has become a rage among school students not to mention the visually-challenged students of Devnar School for Blind who bagged four prizes at a State level Competition that was held on January 20.

T. Andalu, (9th std.) and G. Satya Veni (7th std.) bagged the first prize while CH. Gopal, a 7th Std. and Yugandhar, 9th Std. students won the second and third prizes respectively in the level one competition.

Over 50 students are being trained in Abacus as a part of a brain developing programme in the Devnar School for Blind.

Operation Eyesight Universal(OEU), a Canada based International Developmentorganisation dedicated to eliminate avoidable blindness, has plans to spend fourmillion dollars in

Take one part MacBook Air, one part Microsoft Surface and some 3D "z-axis" interaction and you have the Zen PC concept. The Zen PC is being labeled a sandbox PC. The unique nature of the tablet-like PC allows for users to operate the PC without the use of eyes because everything is done with an active surface that changes texture as you operate.

The Sharq Village & Spa, operated by the Ritz-Carlton Company, has adopted Al Noor Institute for the Blind.

The company said the move is a part of its efforts in fulfilling its corporate responsibility. With this decision, the Sharq Village & Spa reasserted its tradition that extends into the hotel chain's social responsibility programme, Community Footprints, which inspires to positively impact the lives of others through community outreach and corporate giving.

A UK University has come out with a speech recognition technology for languages used in India and Sri Lanka.

The Language Technologies Unit at the Bangor University, Wales, has adapted some of its speech recognition technology for popular languages of the two nations.

The technology adapted to various Indian languages would help blind people communicate better with the outside world as it converts spoken words into machine-readable input.

Lakhs of visually challenged students, deprived of text books and magazines in Braille for years, will be a happy lot. The reason — a software called ‘Poornachandra Tejaswi Braille Kannada Thanthra msha’, developed by three IT professionals in Mysore. The software can translate 14 vernacular languages into the 172-year-old Braille script within no time. It converts convert data typed in Kannada fonts into Braille. However, the Government has not shown any interest in purchasing the software, which costs Rs 17 lakh.

Thanks to a donation and collaboration between Gelman Library and Disability Support Services, blind and visually impaired students can now access resources in the library with more ease.

Last month the library held a ribbon cutting ceremony in celebration of its two new assistive technology suites - study rooms that are equipped with speech, scan and read, magnification and voice recognition software that help blind and visually impaired students see text and use other library materials more easily. About 35 students, library staff and faculty attended the ceremony.