The Hindu Business Line : A special letter

HOW do visually-impaired people get to feel the treasures in books? Through Braille reading, as we all know. But technology is now widening their window and helping them interact more with the world of wonder outside. For instance, today, a visually-impaired child living in a hostel can communicate with his parents, who could be sighted, through writing.

How is this happening?

To trace the story, we need to go back a little in time. It was an initiative that took off about eight years ago when the Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (DSIR) asked Webel Mediatronics Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the West Bengal Electronics Industry Development Corporation Ltd, to develop a small Braille printer and a DOS-based Braille transcription software.

With the job done successfully, Webel Mediatronics was asked by the then Department of Electronics to indigenously develop gadgets and software to modernise Braille education in India. The task was challenging on two counts. First, there was the lack of availability of Braille material in schools for the visually-impaired in the country.

The second was to develop the Braille system in Indian language. The lack of readily-available Braille material had restricted the literacy level to just three per cent of the visually-impaired population. There was a pressing need for schools to generate Braille material through the computer, indigenously, to keep costs down, and in the various Indian languages to help the users. Thus started efforts to develop tools that would help the visually-impaired in teaching, learning, reading, writing and printing. These were areas where the PC could be effectively deployed. The Government of India sanctioned Rs 10 crore to develop the system and deploy it in 30 centres across 22 States. Today, the entire system can be installed at a cost of Rs 1 lakh and this can benefit up to 30 visually-impaired students.

An automatic Braille embosser was developed out of a manual brailler. This was connected to a PC from which print commands could be given. Since the Roman text and Braille were different, it was important to develop a text-to-Braille conversion software. This software was developed in English and 12 Indian languages, including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Oriya, Hindi, Assamese and Marathi. Since the software supports automatic conversion, the person preparing a Braille document need not know Braille himself. This is crucial in view of the dearth of people conversant with Braille. A multimedia-based Braille learning software was developed for sighted persons and this was found useful for would-be transcribers and teachers.

It was also felt necessary to develop tools to enable the visually-impaired to type in Braille on a computer keyboard with audio support. "In schools for normal people, there are normal computers with normal keyboards. As such, the visually-impaired were unable to benefit from the IT revolution. The Direct Braille software that we have developed facilitates writing in Braille with audio support. Now they can type in Braille and take Braille and ink printouts", says Asesh Bandyopadhyay, Deputy General Manager (Technical), Webel Mediatronics Ltd.

Adds Shashanka Dutta, his colleague, who has been actively involved in the project: "Before this, there was no way a visually-impaired person could have any written communication with a sighted person. This will enable a visually-impaired child living in a school hostel to communicate in writing with his parents, who are sighted. Besides, whatever he writes can be preserved and documented".

This particular software addresses another issue as well. With the fingers of children being very tender, manual embossing easily leads to fatigue. Children lose interest and, hence, their written language skills are hampered. The software facilitates writing without the fatigue of manual embossing. The Braille slate is replaced by a keyboard where six keys are kept active. "Now learning Braille is easier, faster and interesting", says Dutta. To overcome the problem of wear and tear of manually-embossed Braille writing, an electronic Braille reading system has been developed. A tactile reader has been developed whereby a file or document on the computer screen can be touch-read on the tactile reader with 20 Braille characters on a single line. "These characters can be refreshed and so the person reads line by line", Dutta says, adding that eight such devices can be connected to a single PC simultaneously. "We call it an electronic library. With a librarian in front of the PC, eight people can read different books simultaneously. Such a library is already operational in 30 schools across the country and students are reading books in electronic mode," he says. A digital archive of Braille books can be accessed at www.braille-aids.com and these are freely downloadable.

According to Bandyopadhyay, Webel Mediatronics is developing a special Braille keyboard whereby eight keyboards can be connected to a single PC. This multi-user writing system can operate as an electronic classroom for the visually-impaired.

With the pilot project being successful, the initiative is presently in expansion mode. A total of 102 schools for the visually-impaired across the country are using the system in different configurations. The idea in the long term, subject to availability of funding, is to install the system in the 500-plus government and NGO-aided schools in the country. When that happens, IT-facilitated education will transform the lives of visually-impaired people even more comprehensively.

Picture by K. Ananthan

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