Elections in India are all about inclusion, the right to vote for all citizens of a certain age.
And this means that people with disabilities, including those who are visually impaired cannot be left out.
A training session in Bhopal has a huge turnout. And why not? For the first time ever, our polling booths will have ballot papers in Braille.
Voters are being trained in advance, so that on the D-Day they need no assistance.
A British boffin has invented a revolutionary sat nav that directs guide dogs for blind people.
The 500-pound gizmo, which will be launched this summer, clips on to the dog's harness and vibrates on the left or right side to tell the handler which direction to go in.
The blind user announces their destination into a sat nav microphone. The vibrating receiver then indicates how to "steer" the dog.
Product design student Jason Perkins developed Peepo after working with the Cardiff Institute for the Blind for a year, reports The Sun.
Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education has decided to provide free text books in Braille to all visually impaired students in the state. This was disclosed by Prof. CL Gupta, chairman of the Board while presiding over a seminar on “Rights of the Disabled: Role of Society”, organized by Shimla Study Circle of Panchnad Research Institute in Himachal Pradesh University. Journalist-turned professor and prominent disability rights activist Ajai Srivastava was the main speaker on this occasion.
In the UPSC Civil Services results declared recently, so far we have come to know of three visually impaired persons who have successfully cleared this examination.
Topping the list is Ajit Kumar (Roll number 219116) who ranked 208th. At 32, Kumar is a lecturer of Political Science in Shyamlal College of Delhi. Now totally blind, he lost his vision at the age of four or five for unknown reasons, where, according to him, he woke up one day to find that he couldn't see any more. A married man, he prepared for these examinations using talking books, readers, and computers.
In his letter dated May 18, 2009, the Hon. President of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) writes to the government for empowering visually challenged chartered accountants. This letter, addressed to the Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, is considered to be a great gesture by visually impaired persons. The letter, in its entirety, is produced below:
No.1-CA(RepCom)/2009
May 18, 2009
When you don’t have any other option, you’ve got to find some way to survive,” says this 35-year-old originally from Kanpur, who refuses to romanticise his life story.
Rambhai Patel does not wear khadi. He has no political connection and has never contested an election. But, on May 16, Rambhai, a visually impaired retired telephone operator in Valsad achieved something that is the envy of seasoned politicians - he polled 27,429 votes as an Independent in the Lok Sabha elections.
The Birla Industrial & Technological Meseum (BITM) has recently inaugurated a special gallery in Kolkata for the visually-impaired to make them aware about the heavenly bodies.
“A world of darkness” — as the name suggests, the gallery provides a detailed description of the cosmos, including the solar system, the Milky Way, the pole stars, the Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Ursa Major and also the 12 zodiac signs.
Imagine a visually challenged person walking into a restaurant and reading the content of the menu using his mobile phone?
That may not be entirely uncommon for some people, who can afford Rs 80,000 investment to buy a five mega pixel camera mobile phone and install the portable Optical Character Reader software in it. But, if the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) efforts succeed, such a system could be available for free to hundreds of blind persons in India.
Anuj Goel’s eyes hurt. But he kept pushing himself, trying to prove that he could do it. It wasn’t easy sitting in the front row for the visually impaired student — he strained his eyes to make out the letters on the blackboard, peering through his thick glasses.
Friday’s CBSE results showed all his pains were worth the effort: Goel not only stood first among 1,034 disabled students who took the examinations, he was also the topper among government school students.
His score: 96.7 per cent.
Stem cells cultured by researchers on a simple contact lens miraculously restored sight to sufferers of blinding corneal disease.
The simple and inexpensive procedure, considered a breakthrough, requires a minimal hospital stay and significantly improves vision within weeks.
University of New South Wales (UNSW) researchers from its School of Medical Sciences harvested stem cells from patients' own eyes to rehabilitate the damaged cornea.
For 12-year-old Avinash, a visually impaired student of an MCD school in Jahangirpuri, it was smooth sailing from classes I to IV.
But since two years, he has been stuck in Class V, as his promotion now is based on performance.
“What could he do? All four years he just came to school and went back and could do nothing,” says lawyer Ashok Aggarwal.
He is pleading in the High Court for a direction to government and MCD schools to appoint special teachers for differently-abled students.
Disabled persons in the state have urged the BJD government to fulfill its promises in the election manifesto of forming a state level commission to look into their demands, after winning its third consecutive term in Orissa.
The main demands of the physically challenged in the state include hike in disability pension from Rs 200 per month to Rs 1000 per month and appointment of a state commissioner to look after their welfare.
Roger Behm lost his sight at 16, the victim of an inherited disease that destroyed his retinas. Both of his eyes were surgically removed.
Now 55, Behm has made himself at home in a sightless world. He started his own business in Janesville selling devices that help the blind cope with day-to-day tasks. He and his wife have raised five children and just adopted another child from China who is also blind. He fishes, canoes, camps and scuba dives.
Patients suffering from blindness now need not wait for donors as doctors have found a way to treat many with the stem cells derived from the cornea of a dead body.
Doctors at the AIIMS and a private clinic in the national capital are using corneal surface stem cells from a cadaver's (dead person) eye for curing corneal injuries in many.
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