More than 500 blind business people are expected to take part in this year's National Association of Blind Merchants (U.S.A.) conference on March 7 2007 in Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
The annual event, known as the Business Leadership and Superior Training conference, or B.L.A.S.T., brings together business and community leaders for speeches, workshops, hands-on training sessions, and networking opportunities.
Chennai based N.G.O. Nethrodaya organised a one-day career counselling guidance session for visually impaired students appearing for class X and XII examinations.
Students from remote villages of Tamil Nadu got an opportunity to study various government and private schemes and other career options.
The speakers who motivated the students were also visually impaired. These included, Veerakumar, advocate, Mani, stenographer, Jalal Ali, musician, Kasi Mani, vocal training instructor and Dakshinamoorthy an English teacher.
Audio books are set to be revolutionised by a tiny card that can store up to five lengthy novels on a phone.The card can be inserted in a mobile phone. So is free from carrying upto six C.D.s for an audio version of a book. The technology, originally developed to store music, will be released this year by Nokia (Finland based mobile phone supplier).
Eberhart Zrenner, executive director of the Eye Hospital at the University of Tübingen, announced at a recent press conference the findings of the test, the first of its kind.
The researchers conducted surgery on seven blind patients between 26 to 58 years of age, and implanted a three-millimetre-square chip behind the retina of one eye in each of them. They found that the chip had restored limited vision to three of the patients.
The multimedia browsing accessibility tool hasn't been named yet. "Chieko Asakawa, a senior accessibility researcher at IBM who has been blind since the age of 14, spearheaded the development of the new software out of frustration with streaming video," IW says. It was designed at IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory.
The new multimedia browsing accessibility tool offers people with visual impairment the same multimedia control features sighted people see and operate with a mouse.
Manufactured for the convenience of blind customers, the updated ATM now makes it possible for individuals to hear all options in addition to seeing them.
Installed in Oslo's Nordea bank, the machine is manufactured by Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted. Aftenposten quotes official Kristin Ruud, from the organization as saying, "All messages from cash machines used to come via the screen. This has made it impossible for the blind to use the machines."
Blind artist Binod Behari Mukherjee is remembered as an eminent artist who helped make Santiniketan the most important centre of art in India.
Now his precious pieces of art are displayed at an exhibition at National Gallary for Modern Art, New delhi.
Talking Tactile Tablet’ (T.T.T.), is a touch sensitive, multi sensory device that provides instant audio feedback from tactile images. The combination of sound and touch transforms the way in which people who are visually impaired can access graphical information.
A tablet, much a like a chapter in a book, is inserted into the T.T.T. When users touch the screen, they can either read Braille or run fingers over a raised graphic while a synthesized voice describes it.
A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court has stayed the Madhya Pradesh High Court order that barred a visually challenged student from studying medicine.
The road to becoming a doctor is finally clear for Nitin Mantri. This visually challenged student in Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh now has the permission of the Supreme Court to finish his medical degree.
Mantri says, “I will fulfill the dreams of my parents and family members. They wanted me to be a doctor and now that the Supreme Court has endorsed our stand I will become a doctor."
Easy Walk consists of a two-buttoned mobile phone, a Bluetooth Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, software that converts text to speech and a call centre, the BBC reports.
The first button on the phone connects to the GPS system to inform the user of their precise location - including house or building number - while the second requests assistance from the call centre, which then phones the user to help them navigate their way.
Hilton-Barber is the first blind person to fly over the English Channel in a microlight, holds the British duel microlight high-altitude record and has wing-walked on a fully aerobatic 450 HP Boeing Steersman bi-plane.
He has endless feats to his credit, such as being the first blind person to do the solo kamikaze skeleton run down the 5G Olympic bobsleigh track in Lillehammer, Norway, and has also participated in the toughest desert ultra-marathon in the world through Death Valley, California.
BBC NI recently teamed up with the RNIB NI, the IFA’s Grassroots Department and the George Best Foundation to introduce the initiative at Northern Ireland’s home internationals.<br><br>A competition was run to find two people to become professionally trained commentators at Northern Ireland games.<br><br>Jackie Fullerton and Joel Taggart had to judge entries of five-minute commentaries describing the imaginary moment your team scored the winning goal in the 2006 World Cup.Robin Peake from Portrush and Brian Elliott from Newtownards won the competition.<br><b
Kerala State Institute of Educational Technology (S.I.E.T.) recently launched audio C.D.s of class 10th syllabus in a condensed format for visually impaired students.
Titled `S.S.L.C. Topper', the C.D.s are dubbed in English and Malayalam and will be given free to all visually impaired students. They’re of 28-hour and 20-hour duration respectively.
The C.D.s were devised as an alternative learning methodology, as it was found that a majority of the visually impaired students lacked the speed and skill to decipher Braille literature.
Set up with funds from ‘Dell Foundation’, the first Dell computer centre in Chandigarh (Punjab) was inaugurated at the Institute for the Blind, recently.
The centre has 12 Dell desktops and two laptops. The hardware is enabled to support software programmes for the visually impaired children to aid their education.
The centre will also provide opportunities for ‘Dell community champions ‘ to make a difference to the lives of the children, by extending a caring hand and sharing their knowledge with them.
The uniqueness about the event was that the route was kept under wraps and it was made known to the rally drivers only during the course of the rally.
The 70 kilometer long journey led by blind navigators commenced from the National Association of the Blind building on Worli Seaface, Mumbai. They guided the sighted drivers through a series of checkpoints, highlighting their skill and ability.
Research Studies
Students and lecturers from the B.A. (Honours) Fashion, Textiles Enterprise course (the University of Portsmouth, U.K), visited the women at ‘The Little flower convent’ (Chennai) to run workshops teaching blind women how to turn their hand-spun cotton into teddy bears, bags, table mats and other household goods. They are about to establish a design and manufacturing company that will create and retail them in the U.K. and in Europe.
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