Reaching out
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: Listening to lessons
VIJAYAWADA
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 this saying that A. Srinivasulu, a visually challenged post-graduate in Gudivada, came up with a vision to help school students with 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.
Overcome odds
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. 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.
Earlier the students 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.
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