Visually impaired students offer tributes to Louis Braille’s photograph at BN College in Patna on Tuesday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, Jan. 4: A visually-challenged student, Pankaj read out a Braille script on the 202nd birth anniversary of Louis Braille at BN College seminar hall today.

However, what Pankaj read out was not a speech but a list of demands he and his visually impaired friends have been demanding for years.

The Patliputra Blind and Physically Handicapped Society, organised a seminar at BN College seminar hall. The function was inaugurated by rural development minister Bhim Singh and was attended by minister for food and civil supplies Shyam Rajak, university officials, teachers and other distinguished guests.

The function also coincided with the demands of teachers and people associated with the welfare of blind people that the state government and university should celebrate the birth anniversary of Louis Braille as a state function.

Louis Braille, a Frenchman developed the series of six dots in 1829 that helps thousands of visually impaired people around the world to read and write.

Speaking on the occasion, Shyam Rajak, said: “It was sheer determination and hard work of Braille at such a tender age that he invented the new script which brought a ray of hope for thousands of blind people.”

Rajak further said that in 1812, Braille became blind at the age of three when he was trying to cut leather with a tool in his father’s shop in Paris. A few days later, Louis started to complain that his other eye was stinging. The doctor said that he would soon become blind. Later, Braille was sent to a blind school and years later he invented scripts.

At the function, speakers said that the government has done little for the blind.

Pankaj demanded that blind people should get unemployment benefits; government should initiate steps for providing technical training to blind people and appointment of teachers in blind schools. There should be establishment of plus 2 level blind schools at Patna, Darbhanga and Bhagalpur.