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Law schools test to go disabled-friendly this year

The largest-ever law school exam that decides admission to nearly a dozen national schools across India will turn disabled-friendly this summer.

Additional time to crack the two-hour exam, option of bringing one's own scribes along with instruments for problem-solving and a question paper sans any visual reasoning to aid the blind are some of the key features of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) policy of candidates with disabilities to be implemented from this year.

Marathon

Ideal for proofreading books in production and other high-speed applications, Marathon produces an entire single-sided page of crisp, perfect Braille every five seconds. That's 200 characters per second, the highest Braille production capacity anywhere in the world at the price. Yet Marathon weighs just 75 pounds and fits neatly in its built in aluminium case, so it can be transported safely.

Talking thermostat

The VIP Series "talking thermostats" combine the latest technology to promote independent living with its verbal s

Bard’s words for the blind

Hundreds of children who could only listen to Tagore’s works can now read them as well, thanks to a gift on the eve of his 150th birth anniversary.

Nine city schools for the visually challenged on Sunday received two copies each of two volumes of Gitabitan in Braille along with 21 other Bengali and English storybooks to mark the occasion.

Marc Zimmer: Optogenetics: Three not-so-blind (anymore) mice

The three blind mice are no longer blind. Well, the ones in the nursery rhyme may still be blind, but the other week researchers at the University of Southern California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used a scientific technique called optogenetics to restore the ability of blind mice to differentiate between light and dark. The mice had retinitis pigmentosa, a disease in which light-sensitive cells in the retina are destroyed, causing the brain to no longer receive visual image information.

KGS Braille Labeller

Despite advances in technology, a simple, convenient way for sighted people who don't know Braille to make professional-looking Braille labels just didn't exist. Until now! The 4-pound Braille Labeler makes transparent single-line labels on strips 7, 15 or 25 Braille characters wide. Even with no Braille experience at all, in minutes you can label almost anything--hotel keys, signs, simple maps, cassettes, CD cases, vending machines, telephones and more--in durable, top quality Braille.

ABBYY FineReader Professional Edition

ABBYY FineReader 8.0 Professional Edition introduces a variety of improvements and new features to help you increase productivity when working with scanned documents, images, PDF files, and faxes. This new version offers intelligent technology enchancements which ensure improved reading of document images taken by digital cameras, more accurate recognition of low-resolution faxes and paper documents, better handling of document layouts, and enhanced security settings in PDF files.

Scribes render silent service to blind students

Meera (name changed), a media professional in the city, is silently rejoicing the success of blind students in the higher secondary exam results. She is part of an informal group of people who double up as scribes -- rendering valuable service to the cause of the visually challenged.

Juliet Pro 60

Juliet Pro 60 has a 40-character-wide embossing line and 60-character-per-second speed. It also includes two other standard features: Single Sheet Tractors and ET Speaks, an innovative speech system.

Juliet Pro

The Juliet Pro features extra-wide 56-character embossing line Brailles two sides at once at up to 55 characters per second. It also comes with Single Sheet Tractors and ET Speaks, an innovative speech system, as standard equipment.

Blind man will sue American Bar Association

A federal lawsuit will be filed against the American Bar Association on behalf of a blind man arguing the required Law School Admissions Test is biased against the visually impaired and should not be required of blind law school applicants.

The suit will be filed on May 24 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Attorney Richard Bernstein said.

Bernstein, who is blind, was the last law student to be admitted to law school 15 years ago without taking the LSAT.

Juliet Classic

Juliet Classic prints top quality Braille on both sides of a page up to 56 characters wide and speed of up to 55 characters a second. Juliet Classic's standard features include: , ,  Regular (12.5 dots per inch) and high-resolution (17 DPI) graphics ,  Dynamic Braille Scaling for different Braille sizes (even within a document) ,  6 or 8-dot Braille ,  Multi-Copy up to 99 copies of a document,

IIA studying if public bldgs are disabled-friendly

Members of the Indian Institute of Architects (IIA) have begun a survey of all government buildings, as per High Court directives, to check if they are barrier-free and convenient for the differently-abled.

Gemini Print and Braille Embosser

Gemini Print and Braille Embosser produces print with Braille in one simultaneous pass, fulfilling a long-time dream of Braille producers everywhere. That’s not all that’s special about Gemini. The next thing you may notice about Gemini might be what it doesn't do— make much noise! Gemini is so extraordinarily quiet you won’t need to exile it to a closet or a sound-muffling cabinet.

ET

Producing top-quality Braille at 60 characters per second, ET's shorter 40-character line makes full use of standard-width Braille paper. ET is a speedy and economical choice to get professional-looking, space-saving interpoint.

Blind cruisers get to 'smell the ocean and feel the wind'

This spring, Patty and Terry Horvath took 46 blind travelers on a Caribbean cruise.

The owners of Best Cruises & Tours in Grand Blanc, Mich., let participants pay $20 a week in installments for months or years to pay for the trip. They subsidized seven volunteers to accompany the group. They arranged special shore excursions on Nassau, St. Thomas and St. Martin. They kept the price as low as they could, pairing up the mostly solo travelers in double rooms.

Their biggest contribution? Serving a completely passed-over market — blind travelers on a budget.

Braille Place

BraillePlace, with speeds of nearly 300 characters per second and a 45-character line, is serious productivity for serious Braille publishing. BraillePlace connects to any computer through its parallel or serial ports and includes ET Speaks to vocalize controls and do other audio tasks.e

Braille Express 150

Built in a durable, transportable case, interpoint Braille Express 150 has a huge 400-page memory for your largest jobs and embosses at 150 characters per second. In production, it is estimated that a Braille Express 150, used for five hours a day, can produce about a half-million pages in a year.

India to host blind cricket Twenty20 World Cup

India is set to host the inaugural blind cricket Twenty20 World Cup in December.

David Townley, president of the World Blind Cricket Council, says the group voted during a two-day meeting in the United Arab Emirates that ended Sunday to hold the tournament in Bangalore starting on Dec. 3. Its schedule has yet to be finalized but the tournament will last a maximum of 14 days.

He says council members Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Bangladesh, Nepal, West Indies and England will participate.

Braille Express 100

Built in a durable, transportable case, interpoint Braille Express 100 has a huge 400-page memory for your largest jobs and embosses at 100 characters per second. In production, it is estimated that a Braille Express 100, used for five hours a day can produce over 350,000 pages in a year.

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