BENGALURU: The state on Tuesday informed the Karnataka High Court that it has constituted a committee to take steps on providing text books in Epub-3 format for visually challenging children studying class 1 to 10, before the academic year 2020-21 begins. A government order to that effect has been placed before the division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Hemant Chandangoudar. Additional Government advocate V Sreenidhi submitted a memo containing the copy of the order dated February 4, 2020, issued by the Department of Public Instructions.
According to the order, the Department of Public Instructions constituted the committee to take steps on a PIL filed by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB).The committee was asked to gather documents from various government departments and convene a meeting immediately to take appropriate action to get inputs from other states which are in the forefront in providing Epub-3 format textbooks for visually challenged students.
After consultation the committee was asked to submit the report to the Managing Director, Karnataka Text Book Society, by February 20, 2020, get it approved by the government and ensure that the students receive textbooks before the academic year begins in June.
The 10-member committee includes Deputy Director KR Rangaiah, Senior Assistant Director Dr R N Shashikala, Assistant Directors Vijaya Kulakarni, CD Jayalakshmi, Technical Assistant Radhamani, Computer Programmer Vinutha of Karnataka Text Book Society and Senior Assistant Director Ravikumar, Samagra Shikshana, Karnataka, Assistant Commissioner for Disabled Padmanabha and Superintendent of Government Brail Printing Press and a representative of DSERT, Bengaluru.