Blind US soul music star Stevie Wonder struck up a singalong at a UN agency Monday as he urged countries to unlock access to copyrighted material that disabled people need for their education and livelihoods.
"What I would like to do today is launch what I call the 'Declaration of freedom for people with disabilities'," he told delegates at the opening of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) assembly in Geneva.
The Delhi State Council of Education, Research and Training has decided to allow an extra time of 20 minutes per hour to persons with disabilities who take the assistance of a writer.
The decision was taken in compliance with National Human Rights Commission recommendations.
In a statement, the NHRC said the SCERT would allot extra time to candidates in the examinations scheduled from April-May 2011 onwards.
October was the busiest month for United Nations commemorative days. There were 16 in total, including World Sight Day when representatives from large international organisations gathered in Switzerland to raise awareness about blindness.
Meanwhile, rural Bihar, which had the worst blindness problem in the world 10 years ago, is still the place on our planet with the most people unnecessarily blind. The good news is that this state now boasts one of the best success stories related to restoring sight. It involves not just a hospital but entire communities.
Scientists in Germany claim to have carried out a "miracle" eye transplant which gave sight back to a visually impaired person.
A team, led by Prof Eberhart Zrenner of technology firm Retinal Implant AG, implanted a microchip in 46-year-old Finn Miikka Terho's eye, which has enabled the totally blind man to read letters of alphabet and the time on a clock face.
The new device shows that the damaged light receptor cells in eye can simply be replaced by a microchip; the rest of the image is obtained by the natural eye, British newspaper the 'Daily Express' reported.
Breaking records is almost a way of life for 30-year-old Mumbai boy Ashish Goyal. He was the first blind student to make it to Wharton Business School, Philadelphia, four years ago. If that isn't enough, Ashish cleared his MBA with honours and went on to win the Joseph P Wharton award, given to one student every year who symbolizes Wharton's way of life. Ashish, who now lives in London, is the first blind trader at J P Morgan, and possibly in any bank anywhere in the world.
A group of women spending several hours outside a room in a government school in Amer block in Rajasthan is a common sight these days. This room is no ordinary classroom, but a resource room for children with special needs who have so far gone unnoticed in the traditional schooling system. However, with the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act coming into effect, the needs of differently-abled children are coming into focus.
A dictionary of contemporary Tamil will shortly be available in Braille form.
The work, based on the 2008 Tamil-Tamil-English dictionary brought out by Chennai-based Crea-A, has been published by 25-year-old Indian Association for the Blind (IAB), which is Madurai based.
S.M.A. Jinnah, founder and secretary general of the association, says that 33 differently abled persons, including 20 visually challenged and three orthopaedically challenged persons, were involved in the production of the dictionary.
Now, there is an exciting new activity in town. It scares you stiff even as it lights up the dark recesses of your mind. No, you don't come to see it. Rather you experience it. Dialogue in the Dark, as it is called, takes one down a dark expanse.
Everyday chores like visiting a park, shopping in the mall and taking a boat ride -- one learns to do in total darkness. Howzzat! The hour-long programme is an eye-opener in fact.
Thrill-a-minute
Once believed to be a male bastion, Gatka— a traditional form of Sikh martial art is also being practiced by the fairer sex now. Determined to learn this form of self-defence, many Punjabi girls are also picking up the art.
On Guru Gobind Singh's birthday, the residents of City Beautiful were enthralled with breath-taking performances on Nagar Kirtan on Tuesday.
Teaching elderly people how to use a cellphone can be frustrating.
Businessman Jagdishbhai Patel experienced this first-hand when he was planning to buy a new mobile phone for his father, 62-year-old Nangibhai Vishrambhai Patel. Most handsets in the market either had too many features or had tiny buttons on a small keypad.
“My father is growing old and his shaky fingers end up pressing two or more buttons at the same time,” he says.
King c3,DK Chopra muttered as the five hour long contest entered the endgame. It may have seemed unusual to onlookers for the player to call out his move, but then his opponent was a visually impaired boy who went on to beat Chopra in the final round of the Chennai Open chess tournament here on Wednesday.
The lanky, 16-year-old Darpan Inani,wearing blue glasses, rose to his feet and felt the chessboard to close out the game, and his mother, sitting beside to help him make the moves, could barely conceal her delight.
Sixteen-year-old Sandeep Shalu, a shot putter and discus thrower, was the proud chief guest yesterday in a Republic Day function celebrated in Sham Nagar by NGO Baba Vishvkarma Dal. Shalu hoisted the National Flag and, apart from him, nearly 25 other blind students from the entire state who had won medals in different games were honoured at the event for their achievements.
A blind man in the US is said to have created history by driving a car around a race track in a test which could one day lead to all visually impaired people taking to the roads, a media report said.
Mark Riccobono, 34, successfully navigated his way round the Daytona International Speedway in Florida, overtaking a van and dodging some cardboard boxes thrown in his way, the 'Daily Mail' online reported.
Researchers at the University of Kentucky, US, compared eyes donated by deceased AMD patients with those of healthy individuals. The healthy were found to have three times higher levels of dicer, an enzyme, in their retinas.
Low levels of dicer cause the build-up of a genetic material alu, which becomes instrumental in killing off light-sensitive retinal cells in advanced "dry" AMD, the journal Nature reported.
Actor Shriya Saran’s newly opened spa in Lokhandwala, called Shree Spa, promises to rejuvenate the mind and body through improved blood circulation, memory and sleep. It also offers relief from fatigue, depression, hangovers, jetlag, PMS and electromagnetic stress. There are also treatments for removal of toxins and boosting the immune system through hormone secretion.
Samsung 150+ netbooks are available with Saksham at subsidised cost of Rs. 9200 for visually impaired. The market cost of the same netbook is around Rs. 15000 and this netbook is coming with atom based processor, 1 gb of ram and 250 gb hdd.
Aplication form for the same can be downloaded by visiting www.saksham.org.
For any query you can call on 011-42411015 or send mail at info@saksham.org.
This information was provided by Saksham.
When blind sculptor Felice Tagliaferri was forbidden to touch one of Italy's most famous statues, he decided revenge was best served not just cold but stone cold.
Tagliaferri, 41, spent much of two years creating his marble interpretation of "Cristo Velato," or "Veiled Christ," a 1753 masterpiece that he has neither seen nor touched.
Giuseppe Sanmartino's exquisitely detailed sculpture of the body of Christ lying wrapped in a fine shroud is one of the prime tourist attractions in Naples.
Yes! the name of the tamil mailing list is "VALLUVAN PAARVAI".
As you all know that technology has helped all visually challenged to breath the air of independence on par with the sighted at all levels. In this context, both N V D A and E SPEAK has provided voice synthesisers for most of the regional languages in India.
Sania Zaidi sits in the R. Premadasa stadium press box as the World Cup drama unfolds beneath her.
Nothing unusual about that except the 28-year-old Pakistani journalist has been blind since childhood and is on a mission to promote better relations between Pakistan and India.
"I want cricket to promote peace, courtesy and courage which we have been lacking in our wonderful world. I can't see it but I can sense it and am here at this World Cup to promote my mission," Sania told AFP.
He cannot see but has always wanted to reach out to people through his voice. Now Rishi, 21, is doing just that, thanks to Panjab University's community radio Jyotirgamaya that gave him a chance to host a radio show.
Enthusiastic and determined, Rishi, who goes by only one name, does not want his visual disability to come in the way of his dreams. 'I always listened to radio and fantasised to explore the world with the help of my voice,' a visibly excited Rishi told IANS here as his programme went on the air recently.
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