After several decades of neglecting the Braille presses across India, the Centre has finally woken up to the plight of the 12 million visually challenged people.

The Government on Monday announced a scheme wherein overall non-recurring assistance of up to `2 crore would be made available to NGOs and Government organisations to provide access to blind children and adults for much-needed books in Braille.

Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment also announced a grant of `1.69 crore to All India Confederation of the Blind for capacity augmentation of Braille presses.

“We are aware of the difficulties faced by the visually challenged population. This is a new initiative under our Government’s new schemes for empowering the disabled,” said Thawar Chand Gehlot, Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment.

“We want to see a change at the earliest and we are working in the right direction,” he said.

“It is positive news and we are happy. At the same time, keeping technological advancements in view, where the world is moving to digital and audio books, we think that the government should also make those options available for the visually challenged in the near future,” said Javed Abidi, director of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) in India.

“Braille books are much bigger and ungainly to carry. They are an outdated concept but at least, something is better than nothing,” he said.

Although the visually challenged children have been granted equal privilege to school education under The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, it hardly holds true in practice.

Of the estimated two million blind children in the country barely five per cent get to attend schools. This handful too fails to benefit much due to unavailability of texts. Braille texts are either not printed, and if so, are grossly below the required numbers.

Most State-run printing Braille presses are in dire straits because of outdated machinery and old technology.  An example being the Malakpet Braille Press — the only Braille printing press in Andhra Pradesh set up in 1986 for producing books and other textual learning material for the visually impaired school has never been upgraded. The visually challenged workers who are facing job losses have launched an online campaign on savebraillepress.blogspot.com.

Similarly, in Haryana and Punjab, government-run Braille presses are either nonfunctional or underutilised. In the northeast, there is not a single Braille press.

The situation is slightly better in Odisha, where the only Braille press located in Berhampur is equipped with modern Braille printing technology. It prints more than 15,000 textbooks for the blind annually but what is worrisome is that it is being managed by two contractual employees - manager and an operator. The manager is reported to be getting a consolidated pay of `5,286 per month while the operator gets `3,540 per month