The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Madurai News : `They need education and jobs, not sympathy'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 11, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Madurai

`They need education and jobs, not sympathy'

By Our Staff Reporter

MADURAI, OCT. 10. "Don't feel for my plight. I am like any other human being but for the blindness. The disability provided me many long hours to browse books and improve my knowledge," said an English professor.

Two decades after his tryst with the visually impaired professor, the Commissioner of Income Tax, P. R. Ravi Kumar, recalls, "His advice to study hard and become someone had instilled confidence in me to write the civil service examination and become an officer."

Though crippled by lack of vision, the blind did not feel diffident of displaying their talents. But they lack recognition. Each of them has a special skill, and this ought to be brought out, says Mr. Ravi Kumar.

"Those were the days when the blind could cane chairs and make a living. But this has become a thing of the past owing to the advent of plastic furniture. Now the blind are forced to seek new avenues to earn their bread," says S. M. A. Jinnah, secretary general, Indian Association for the Blind (IAB).

"This is not the only handicap we face. Many of us are denied jobs in government or private institutions, though there are laws that mandate the firms to recruit the visually impaired," regrets Mr. Jinnah, who himself is blind since birth, and who is the motivating spirit behind the IAB Higher Secondary School and Rehabilitation Centre.

As per the rules, certain vacancies in each department should be filled with blind candidates. But this is not followed, he claims. The need of the hour, he says, is to educate and provide them jobs so that they will not become a burden unto themselves or their families. The Government should initiate urgent steps to ensure the blind are well educated and rehabilitated.

The school and the rehabilitation centre are doing their best to provide education and vocation training to the blind. It is the first institution to introduce a computer course for the visually impaired higher secondary students. The computer is loaded with the reading software (JAWS for Windows), and it helps the students learn the nitty-gritty of computers and Windows operations. It guides the students to learn even languages as they can hear the pronunciation of words, or their spellings.

The IAB offers one-year course for stenographers, typewriting courses in Tamil and English and training in tailoring. A Braille map on the physical and political features of India and the world enables the students to feel the boundaries, mountains and ridges, so that they could memorise the places along with their contours.

The library has been equipped with a computer-based Braille translator, `Duxbury Braille Translator for English.' The library also contains a reading machine for the visually impaired to either read or hear the words from the pages that are scanned by the machine. Audiocassettes on various topics, including the articulation of words, come in handy for the students.

The IAB prints textbooks on various subjects for students from Standard VI to Plus-Two under the State Board. Efforts are made to made certain books of interest such as Tirukkural, Agni Siragugal and Kamaraj's biography into Braille.

The IAB began printing Braille books in 1999, and is supplying them to several schools. Braille books are also printed for college students, especially in Arts subjects. On an average, 300 books, containing 60,000 pages in all, are printed a year.

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