Helping the visually challenged
BHARATH ANUROOP G.
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The audio library for the visually challenged is a boon.
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PHOTO: RAJU V.
Making it easy: In the audio library
''The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision,” said Helen Keller, the famous visually challenged American author.
It is probably in tune with the spirit of this saying that A. Srinivasulu, a visually challenged post-graduate in Gudivada, came up with a vision to help school students of the same problem.
Though visually challenged, he successfully completed his Master of Arts in Public Administration from the Andhra University.
While in college, he experienced the difficulties that visually challenged students face during examinations.
He could not get any one to read lessons for him, as all his classmates were busy preparing for the examinations.
Reach out
“The experience made me think of doing something after my education for people like me.
I felt that no visually challenged student should face the kind of difficulties that I faced,” he says.
He got support from four enthusiastic youths – K. Michael, B.V. Nagendra Rao, D.V. Nageswara Rao and A. Srinivasa Rao – who joined hands with him to launch ‘Aadarsha Andhula Samkshema Sangham’ in 2000. These four youths too are either partially or fully visually challenged.
After doing extensive research and survey about the number of visually challenged students going to school in Krishna district and the difficulties they face, especially during examinations, they decided to set up an audio library.
As every other good deed, this one too had its share of obstacles. Since all of them come from middle class families and only two of them have petty jobs, mobilising the money required for running the audio library was a major problem and it continues to be so.
Still, their grit and determination could overcome every hardship. The audio library was finally opened on September 8, 2007, in Gudivada.
They initially provided audio cassettes of lessons to the students appearing for Board examinations, for which they recorded about 1,300 cassettes with the help of a law student who read out the lessons. The cassettes were handed over to different schools.
Students of Vijaya Mary Integrated School for the Blind and Karnati Rammohan Rao Municipal High School in the city are among the beneficiaries of this novel initiative.
Sister Princy, principal of Vijaya Mary Integrated School for the Blind, says that the audio cassettes provided by “Aadarsha Andhula Samkshema Sangham” have made learning easy for their students.
Earlier the students had to read lessons from the Braille notes that they prepared on their own.
The cassettes have made learning fun for them.
“This, in a way, has revolutionised our way of learning,” Venkatesh, a student at the school, says.
Not content with his contribution, Mr. Srinivasulu says he plans to open a computer training institute in Gudivada for visually challenged students, as there is only one in south India, in Chennai.
As the project requires much larger funding, he makes an earnest appeal to philanthropists and large-hearted people to extend a helping hand.
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