Following a series of complaints from parents of students with disabilities, theMaharashtra Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education has a compiled a detailed list of concessions offered to such students appearing for the SSC examinations. 

The list mentions concessions for students under seven categories of disabilities: visually challenged, hearing and speech impaired, orthopedically handicapped, spastic and cerebral palsy, learning disabilities and autism. The list will be distributed to all state board schools and uploaded on the board's website. "Students with learning disabilities enjoy certain liberties that are not available for regular students while appearing for their board exams. Ideally, the concerned school should inform students about these provisions but this is hardly the case," said a board official. 

"Most schools are not helpful when it comes to informing parents about various concessions. Many times, parents come to us seeking answers. The board needs to have a mechanism in place to ensure that schools follow the prescribed rules," said Chitra Iyer from the Forum For Autism. The board should also inform various groups engaged in helping parents get the right information, she said. 

The board has mandated that schools hold a meeting with parents of students with disabilities and update them about the concessions. In a circular, the board said schools have to maintain a record of the information provided and it should be signed by students and their parents. 

The concessions 

Additional 20 minutes given to visually challenged/ orthopedically handicapped/autistic students for board exams 

Grace marks of 20 allotted for all disabilities, to be given to a single subject or divided between multiple subjects to help students pass the exam 

Candidates with learning disabilities are granted exemptions for spelling mistakes, wrong sentence structure, errors in marking maps and making mistakes in numbers 

Students with autism and learning disabilities can use calculators for maths and science papers 

Autistic children can use computers, provided they do not contain any kind of data. 

Source: Times of India