HYDERABAD: Inspired by the launch of the `e-Braille Library on Wheels' in the city under the aegis of the Guru Kondaveeti Jyothirmaye International Trust, a Nellore-based voluntary organisation has also set up a Braille library for the benefit of visually challenged students.

The first-ever e-Braille Library on Wheels was the initiative of the trust founder and well-known singer of Annamacharya Sankeertanas Kondaveeti Jyothirmaye and was inaugurated in November last year. The library carries a variety of reading material in Braille script to the door-step of visually challenged students in the State.

Braille library

The Nellore-based NGO `Sight' invited Jyothirmaye for its inauguration recently. A visually challenged teacher K.Raja, his friends and railway employees who set up the NGO Sight, decided to run a Braille library when they learnt about such an institution through newspapers, Ms. Jyothirmaye said.

"I am happy that the concept was being promoted by other NGOs too to benefit more visually impaired students," she added. Emphasising that devotional Sankeertanas would bring peace and solace to individuals besides inculcating a positive attitude, she said that it had been her experience when she conducted training camps in Government school for the Blind, Women's Jail, Chanchalguda and other institutions free of cost. The inmates of the women's jail surprised the authorities by composing and presenting a dance programme based on Sankeertanas, she said.

Funds through donations

Giving the details on the e-Braille library on wheels, Ms.Jyothirmaye said it was a Maruti van fitted with a multi-media computer system with special software package and radio cum tape-recorder to enable the visually impaired students operate the computer and the system would read out the books for them.

The students could listen to news and other useful programmes on radio or listen to cassettes of rhymes, songs of their choice on the tape recorder. An industrialist, Raghavendra, has donated funds for the mobile e-Braille library.

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