While hailing the revolutionary discovery of Louis Braille as being a fundamental necessity that helped them overcome barriers, some of the visually challenged professionals in the city feel that technology interventions have also helped them think beyond Braille in several walks of life.

For Carnatic vocalist Hamsini Nagendra, who has a Ph.D. in music, her life amid Braille was restricted up to college. “At NMKRV, my lecturers during my degree classes would be amazed as to how I would instantly translate the lectures in Braille using my typewriter. Soon, I started using audio cassettes to record lessons,” said Prof. Nagendra, who teaches music in Bangalore University. In 2005, she took up a computer course designed for the visually challenged by the National Association for the Blind and NIIT. “Computers came to us like a contemporary lifejacket. They opened up new windows and made it easier for us to download audio files and have them read out in our computers,” she said.

Vocalist Maruthi Prasad (37), a student of T.S. Sathyavathi, apart from banking on his memory to remember hundreds of kritis, also records them. “But I am impressed with voice option on mobile phones for sending messages. It helps me to look beyond Braille that I wasn’t very comfortable with,” said Mr. Maruthi Prasad.

Bandi Kiran Kumar, who works for Punjab National Bank, said, “Braille is for being in touch with the basics, like reading and writing. But its fun to adapt to technology. We can now access Skype and WhatsApp on touch-screen phones and I use them to even have official discussions,” Mr. Kumar said.

Making them computer literate At the Ramana Maharishi Academy for the Blind in J.P. Nagar, students are exposed to lessons on Braille up to the 6th standard. After that they are given tapes and MP3s of recorded lessons and use JAWS software on computers. “Our academic teaching has to expose children to Braille to help them source reference material for their study, but we make them totally computer literate,” said T.V. Srinivasan, founder-principal of the academy.