As a kid Salum Ageze Kashafali would wake up at the wee hours to the sound of bombs with debris scattered around in a ball of smoke.

The little Congolese would often think if the long night of darkness would ever end, if he could ever go to a school like other children, if he could get a meal without begging in a queue.

And then luck smiled on Kashafali and his family as they took refuge in Norway – the land of midnight sun – where he realised his dream of becoming a top-notch sprinter.

HYDERABAD: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease listed in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. Numerous NGOs are there claiming to work for disabled persons. But services of these NGOs are more or less limited to visible disabilities, like victims of acid attack, people without a limb or hearing impaired.

AHMEDABAD: One of the largest public libraries in Ahmedabad,  the Sheth Maneklal Jethabhai (MJ) public library,  inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi with the donation of his  personal collection of 7,000 books in the 1930s—recently   recently audited the number of books it has for visually  impaired people. A report in this regard claims that some  2,500 audiobooks were recently added to the reference and  regular book stacks. The library also possesses Braille books.

Year after year, the bulk of MBBS doctors with disabilities who clear the post graduate entrance exam for seven All India Institutes of Medical Sciences, including the one in Delhi, are denied admission. Barely 0.4% of seats over the last three years have been given to them despite the disability rights law of 2016 stipulating a 5% reservation. Even the handful who have got admission were mostly given non-clinical subjects which have few takers.

Visually impaired students studying in Class X and other higher classes with minimum 40% blindness are eligible to get free talking laptops from the government for educational purposes, as per a comprehensive scheme framed by the State government.