Reading books is something that should not be restricted to only people born with the gift of sight.
The visually challenged too need books for education, to be aware of developments and to earn themselves a place in society.
Faith India, an NGO with its office at Vennikulam in Ernakulam, which has for the last 25 years been working to train physically challenged to improve their quality of life and integrate them into mainstream society. The NGO has recently translated literary books like the ‘Ramayana’, ‘Bhagwad Geetha’, ‘Panchatantra’, some of the ‘Vedas’, Sree Narayana Guru’s works and the ‘Upanishad’s into Braille for the visually challenged people.
Talking about this, Ambujaksham, library in-charge says, “We don’t have too many books for the blind, either in colleges or outside of it! Hence, we decided to translate some of the famous books into Braille to make the books accessible to the visually challenged.”
Five blind students themselves have co-incidentally translated the books into Braille. The long and arduous project, was fraught with problems for the blind students. Braille script is a system of raised dots on either a paper or a surface. Hence the requirements were of special Braille paper and typewriters and a Brailler. Although a Brailler does make work faster, the availability of only one machine necessitated the rest of the work to be done manually, a slow and time-consuming process.
Ambujaksham says that the centre has plans to set up a big library and although only a single copy of the translated Braille book is currently available, the demand for the books is overwhelming. He adds, “Translating books into Braille has also provided job opportunities to a lot of visually challenged people.” The program director Prof Chandrasekhar adds, “The size of the paper is what adds to the time factor. For a normal page of an A4 size paper to be transcribed to Braille takes six Braille papers. The volume of Ramayana that had 19 volumes took nearly a year to be transcribed. We are aiming to throw open the doors of the classics and the world of historical books to the visually challenged people.”
The Professor has a wish though, “I wish we had a digital Braille printing press which would give us a huge mechanical advantage but the cost of the same is 3-4 lakh which at the moment is out of bounds for us.”
The visually challenged too need books for education, to be aware of developments and to earn themselves a place in society.
Faith India, an NGO with its office at Vennikulam in Ernakulam, which has for the last 25 years been working to train physically challenged to improve their quality of life and integrate them into mainstream society. The NGO has recently translated literary books like the ‘Ramayana’, ‘Bhagwad Geetha’, ‘Panchatantra’, some of the ‘Vedas’, Sree Narayana Guru’s works and the ‘Upanishad’s into Braille for the visually challenged people.
Talking about this, Ambujaksham, library in-charge says, “We don’t have too many books for the blind, either in colleges or outside of it! Hence, we decided to translate some of the famous books into Braille to make the books accessible to the visually challenged.”
Five blind students themselves have co-incidentally translated the books into Braille. The long and arduous project, was fraught with problems for the blind students. Braille script is a system of raised dots on either a paper or a surface. Hence the requirements were of special Braille paper and typewriters and a Brailler. Although a Brailler does make work faster, the availability of only one machine necessitated the rest of the work to be done manually, a slow and time-consuming process.
Ambujaksham says that the centre has plans to set up a big library and although only a single copy of the translated Braille book is currently available, the demand for the books is overwhelming. He adds, “Translating books into Braille has also provided job opportunities to a lot of visually challenged people.” The program director Prof Chandrasekhar adds, “The size of the paper is what adds to the time factor. For a normal page of an A4 size paper to be transcribed to Braille takes six Braille papers. The volume of Ramayana that had 19 volumes took nearly a year to be transcribed. We are aiming to throw open the doors of the classics and the world of historical books to the visually challenged people.”
The Professor has a wish though, “I wish we had a digital Braille printing press which would give us a huge mechanical advantage but the cost of the same is 3-4 lakh which at the moment is out of bounds for us.”
Source : Deccan Chronicle , 25th June 2013
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