o battle out the routine discrimination being meted out to the disabled, a conference organised by the Able Disabled All People Together (Adapt) discussed forming of a national front for the differently-abled.
Disabled people with traumatic experiences in rural as well as city slums along with activists attended the conference at Bandra on Wednesday to suggest that a front like Disabled People’s Organisation (DPO) would better address their concerns.
Phill Fernandes, a member of our Gnomies community and a visually impaired geek in his own right, recently brought a story to my attention involving his banking institution and how it has made his life more difficult.
We depend on companies we work with to cater to our needs to its best ability. Banks are where we keep our money, our precious possessions, and in some cases our trust to adhere to agreements involving our vehicles and homes. In recent years, the banking world has undergone a considerable amount of scrutiny for how they handle funds and determine risk for loans.
At Phoenix Market City, Viman Nagar, a large group of people gathered early on Sunday morning. A neatly painted lane pointed towards the exit from Gate number 4. From the starting point, 30 cars stood bumper-to-bumper waiting for the signal to be given. At about 7.45 am, the first car was released at the Blind Men's Car Drive. People sporting red caps and t-shirts spelt support.
Visually impaired by birth, he was inclined towards music from his nascent days. He not only practiced it, but also went on to give concerts both in India and abroad.
Now, he has a Ph D in music for his research on the subject- Recent development in Karnatak classical music, under the guidance of renowned violinist Mysore M Manjunath.
The foam ball sailed over the net, rattling as it bounced. Robin Patche quickly adjusted her feet and returned it with a smooth backhand, drawing praise from the sidelines.
"Robin, nice turnaround," called out Mary Alice Ross, an adapted physical education teacher at the California School for the Blind, then adding to a bystander, "She got really good really quickly."
Major Gopal Mitra (41) may desire to borrow vision for few moments to salute the Indian tricolour flying high at the UNICEF headquarters in New York on his first day of a new job tomorrow. A former Indian Army officer, Mitra is the first disabled person from India to be appointed at the headquarters of a major UN agency.
The Social Welfare Society at the Commecs Institute of Business and Emerging Sciences (CIBES) organised an event for collecting donations for the disabled, at their Share Faisal campus. The affair was held in collaboration with the Pakistan Association of the Blind, on Sunday.
This is no usual boy-meets-girl love story. Rakesh Solanki and Sunita Pawar, both visually impaired, will be tying the knot on Sunday.
And, NGO Louis Braille Apang Kalyan Sanstha, Lonikand, is playing Cupid for the couple by making it a grand affair, much
beyond the meagre means of the two.
The NGO works for the visually challenged by making provisions of home, education and vocational skills.
Attributing their alliance to the sanstha, Rakesh said, “The founder of this NGO, Arjun Kendre, was my batchmate at PR Lunkad Blind School, Bhosari.”
Blind students studying at the University of Pune and its affiliated colleges in the district have reason to cheer.
In order to increase their pace of learning and enhance their academic potential, the Pune University Blind Student Learning Centre which functions under the Department of Education and Extensive Education, has decided to distribute special MP3 players to its students.
Some of the devices have already been handed out and the results have been encouraging.
The ability to look both ways before crossing a street, read a simple recipe or punch in a telephone number is often taken for granted by those without visual impairment.
But nearly 15 million people living in the U.S. can’t perform some of these tasks. And that includes many American Indians.
Bidirectional Access Promotion Society (Bapsi) has released an Android app called PocketSMS, that allows visually impaired and hearing impaired individuals to send and read text messages (SMS) from their phones.
Approximately 400 athletes from all over the country will be seen in action in the 8th edition of the National Athletics for the Visually Challenged to be organized by the Punjab Sports Association for the visually challenged persons with the help of Bharat Blinds Sewak Samaj at Baddowal village on the Ludhiana-Ferozepur road on April 17 and 18.
The information was given at a press conference here today by chief organiser Gurpreet Singh Chahal and organizing committee chairman Tit Ram.
The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) wants the human resource development (HRD) ministry to amend the right to education (RTE) law to ensure that disabled children have the choice to study either in an ordinary or a special school. ”The HRD ministry should amend the act to ensure that the RTE to all children with disabilities is safeguarded and that the choice to such children to study in an inclusive school or a special school is real,” said the draft guidelines framed by the council’s working group on the rights of the disabled. According to the NAC, while one view was tha
Poorva Subramanium is barely 10 years old, but has learnt an important lesson in life — not to trouble her parents when they come out of the schools they have been visiting these days. “It is frustrating. No school wants to admit her. She is good at shapes, colours and can also read,” says her mother, showing her report card from a special school here that deems her, ‘Fit to be admitted in a mainstream school'.
All was well with 24-year-old S Vinay Kumar till the day he was diagnosed with incurable congenital glaucoma. Rough days began as Vinay started losing his vision every day and finally lost it completely in 2007. "I was diagnosed with the disease in 2004 and went completely blind by 2007.
Having landed a much-sought-after job at the research lab of a leading global IT major, fresh out of college, Anirudh Sharma was working on cutting-edge product technologies. But what really drove him was something he was doing on the side, in his own time, over weekly offs and after hours, burning the proverbial midnight oil: developing a shoe that he hoped would transform the lives of millions of visually impaired people.
Only about 10 to 12 percent of the nation's blind population are able to read Braille, and some advocates are worried that the nearly 200-year-old system of writing for the visually impaired could be on its way out.
Michael Cush was born with vision loss and learned Braille when he was a child, but he hardly uses it now.
"It's just not practical in my day-to-day life, mainly because it is very laborious and expensive to produce and also it is not very portable," says Cush.
At a rare workshop organised by a city not-for-profit, 61 vision-impaired participants were given cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and first-aid training on Sunday. This is probably the first workshop of its kind in India. “We wanted to eradicate the myth that the vision impaired cannot help anyone, and therefore thought the workshop was a good idea” said Sushmeetha B Bubna, founder director, Voice Vision, the NGO that organised the workshop that was held at HK Institute of Management Studies and Research in Jogeshwari.
There is not much by way of reading facilities for the visually challenged population in the State. While the vast majority has to make do with the help of others who read aloud for them, the practical impediments of Braille system make text books largely unavailable.
Singers like Suresh Wadekar, Kavita Krishnamurthy and Amit Kumar are set to perform together to raise funds for the education of visually challenged kids.
They will take to the stage for Shri Kulswamini Mata Charitable Trust, an organisation that has been working in the field of education for blind children.
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