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| Home >> Visually Challenged >> Visually Challenged : News Articles |   Email this Page |
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Textbooks on computers for visually challenged......Snehal Rebello Mumbai
LAST YEAR, Austin Pinto's preparation for her Class 11 exams was an uphill effort. Visually challenged, even getting to the chapter he needed was a painstaking scroll through pages of notes.
This year, a software for visually challenged students will allow him to reach the chapter with the mere click of a mouse. The lesson will be then read out in a hu man or synthetic voice via a headset or speakers. The digital player for the software can be downloaded for free or through a pen drive. The system has been christened DAISY Digitally Accessible Information System. The Xavier's Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC) is creating 20 book titles through the system in subjects like economics, psychology, sociology, history, political science and foundation course for Classes 11 and 12 in the arts stream. Commerce books on subjects like organisation of commerce and secretarialpracticewillfollow .Allthese will benefit thousands of visually challenged college students across Maharashtra.
"Students can access and navigate through lessons like with a textbook, which will be available on CD," said Professor Sam Taraporevala, XRCVC director. Currently visually challenged , students listen to notes in Word or Notepad formats. Now, students will only have punch in the page or chapter number they need and listen to a synthetic voice. "Software currently in use is tedious and time consuming. Visually challenged students can use the digital format to quickly reach different pages or even skip chapters. Studying will be faster now," said Austin (18). That's not all. The Delhi chapter of the National Association for the Blind (NAB) will be ready in June with a similar format for National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) books, recorded with human voice, which will benefit 2 lakh visually challenged students across India from the Central Board for Secondary Education. While NAB was lucky to get the e-copy of textbooks from NCERT, Taraporevala said it's a daunting task to get publishers to e-format their books due to copyright issues. Only Sheth Publishers parted with the e-formats. "We wish to take up more tasks for college and university books once publishers are forthcoming. We are prepared to build in safeguards to protect publisher's interests," Taraporevala said. URL: http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/artMailDisp.aspx?article=07_05_2008_003_014&typ=0&pub=264 URL: http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/artMailDisp.aspx?article=07_05_2008_008_004&typ=0&pub=264 |
| Also see : Dementia & Alzheimer's, Public Health, Public Health : News Articles |
