THE STATE Government on Saturday announced to establish a universityfor the handicapped in the name of Dr Shakuntala Mishra, mother of BSPgeneral secretary SC Mishra, who is also an MP.  The university willcome up in Lucknow.A state cabinet meeting presided over by ChiefMinister Mayawati gave the go-ahead to the project.

Mayawati toldnewspersons that initially the university was proposed underpublic-private partnership (PPP) and SC Mishra had offered to take upthe project through the Dr Shakuntala Mishra Smriti Sewa Trust.

IBM launched on Tuesday an application that seeks to harness the power and time of Internet users around the globe to make the Web more accessible to the visually impaired.

Many blind or partially sighted users run screen reading software that describes the content of a Web page but often encounter problems. The screen readers rely on text or descriptive tags to explain the items on a page but these are often added as an after thought or are incomplete.

If you were blind, couldyou navigate your way around a busy city street or distinguish betweena 1 bill and a 50 bill if you were trying to buy a beer at a bar?

These are some of the challenges visitors will face at a20,000-square-foot interactive exhibition coming to Atlantic Stationthis summer.

An office without a board. Thankfully, I have the right address to fallback on. But I miss the bell at the gate, and hopelessly go up and down the staircase for a while. Finally, a few hard knocks on the basement door receive a response. “George Abraham, is he in?” Well, he is in, at work when the clock strikes nine every morning, I soon learn.

Settling down on a steel chair, I wait for Abraham, sizing up the hall. A few computers, some chairs strewn around, bare walls, a few hands endlessly tap-tapping on the keyboards with headphones on.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Disabilities, Sheikha Hessa bint Khalifa bin Ahmed al-Thani, has commended the recent move by the Qatar Central Bank to introduce banknotes which have features to help the visually impaired denominate them.

Filmmakers these days try each and every trick in the book to get maximum audiences to see their films. Now Mirchi Movies, the makers of the children's flick Hari Puttar- A Comedy of Terrors, is doing something which has not yet been attempted in India before. For their upcoming film, the makers have decided to release the film not just in the theatres but also in Audio form in a special DVD which will benefit visually impaired people.

Meet Murali C (28), a mechanical engineer and system operation lead specialist at IBM, and K. Joshi (27), a masters degree holder in philosophy now employed by software major Infosys.

They are just two of the thousands of entrants in the city's booming information technology (IT) industry.

However, what sets Murali and Joshi apart from the rest is that both are visually challenged.