Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, September 25
The National Association for the Blind (NAB) conducted a seminar on accessible reading and writing solutions in association with the Saksham Foundation at Aasha Kiran, a vocational training centre for differently abled, in Sector 46-D today.
Dipendra Manocha, chairman of Saksham Foundation and Daisy Forum of India (DFI), who is himself visually challenged, was the main speaker on the occasion.
In all, 140 visually challenged persons from Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh along with teachers from various institutions attended the seminar. The objective of the seminar was to make visually challenged end users, educational institutions and government policy makers aware of various options for reading and writing independence for persons with blindness or low vision. A revolution has happened in this field. However, the number of users taking benefit of this is too less due to lack of adequate information about the available options.
The Government of India has started a library named ‘Sugamya Pustakalaya’ in association with the DFI, which is India’s first and largest collection of 2,30,000 accessible books for the use of blind and low vision persons. This library is a collaborative effort of several organisations to end the book famine faced by people with print disabilities.
Here, one can access books in diverse languages from various libraries across India. The library also partnered with international agencies like Bookshare and Accessible Books Consortium to provide visually impaired with accessible books from all over the world.
Manocha provided detailed information on registration of all individuals and institutions with this library. All the latest hardware software for the use of visually impaired were displayed and solutions to all problems related to the use of technology faced by visually challenged were informed.
Meanwhile, Vinod Chadha, honorary president, National Association for the Blind, said such seminars helped in bringing latest technology to the visually challenged thus, bringing them at par with the rest of the world.
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