BENGALURU: “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight, but no vision,” says Helen Keller. In a world that often lacks vision, a group of volunteers has stepped up to make life easier for the visually impaired. Dhvani Granth is an initiative to record books for the visually impaired students.

Started a couple of years ago, the group has recorded first-year pre-university and Class X books, and 4,000-pagers to help those who are preparing for an insurance job. All subjects which are in readable format are taken up.

Dhvani Granth is one of the many social initiatives run by a non-profit organisation named Volunteers for Cause (VFC). VFC helps social organisations, across 12 different categories, and more than 1,000 volunteers reach each other.
 

Based on the need of the visually impaired students, VFC’s Dhvani Granth team contacts volunteers through the Facebook page (facebook.com/vfcdhvanigranth) and a WhatsApp group.

A sample recording is performed and a check is done with respect to the clarity of voice, the tempo of recital, the echo, the background noise etc. Usually ten pages are given to each volunteer. Sasikala Ranganathan, a co-ordinator, says, “All audio is recorded in MP3 format.”

Surendran M Krishnan, the founder of VFC, says that the idea for Dhvani Granth came from their experiences from Penpal, another VFC initiative, through which people offer to be scribes for a visually impaired student’s examinations.

Source: http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/Volunteers-of-all-ages-read-out-study-books-for-visually-challenged/2016/08/22/article3590634.ece