Bhubaneswar, April 4: Lessons are set to become easy for the visually-challenged students of Ravenshaw University in Cuttack, who will soon have a portion of the Kanika Library all to themselves.
The university, which has nearly 60 visually-challenged students pursuing various courses, is setting up hi-tech machines in the campus library and composing Braille notes in different subjects to be used by these students.
“Earlier, neither was there an exclusive room for them on campus nor could they access the reading materials stocked up in the libraries. Therefore, we have earmarked a part of the Kanika Library for our special students and have installed six computers with Internet facilities, scanners, which instantly turn text into speech, and a Braille printer,” said faculty member and director of Ravenshaw’s IAS Study Circle Priyabrata Majhi.
He added that the Jaws (job access with speech) software was installed in the computers that could convert documents written in Microsoft Windows for their convenience.
This special study centre, which would be named after blind poet, Bhima Bhoi, was the brainchild of the university vice-chancellor, B.C. Tripathy.
“There is a similar facility at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, which the vice-chancellor wanted to replicate here so that the visually impaired students can understand their course material and reference books better,” Majhi said.
Varsity authorities said the centre is being set up at a cost of about Rs 7 lakh and would become completely functional within a week. And if need be, they would appoint a differently-abled person to coordinate the cell and guide the students on how to use the devices.
“The expenses have been met from the funds provided by the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, for the establishment of the equal opportunities cell at Ravenshaw.
The university has also diverted some of its funds for the purpose,” Majhi said. “Hopefully, these new learning aids would be of help to us. Our faculty members have told us that the machines can convert the words in the books, newspapers or any other document into audio format, which we can listen to through earphones,” said a student who is partially visually impaired.
