THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: For a visually impaired student, reading books relating to the prescribed textbooks has a lot of limitations unless aided by the Braille script. How about making the whole process more interesting by converting the text into speech?
The State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT) is aiming to take up the task in a big way. And there is an added attraction too - the voice that reads out the book can be of his or her own classmate or schoolmate.
As part of a novel project called ‘Shrutipaadam’, SCERT in association with Kerala Federation of the Blind Teachers Forum, plans to record audio books for the visually impaired with the help of school students. A meeting of senior visually impaired teachers and SCERT representatives will be held to chalk out a plan. In the run up to bringing out such audio books, SCERT will conduct awareness in schools till March 31 about the importance of voice donation by holding special camps.
“Five schools from each district will be selected for the awareness programme. A total of 15 students will be selected from these schools for production of audio books. We are planning to bring out at least 300 audio books as part of the project,” said an SCERT official. The work on audio books, which are mostly supplementary material to the prescribed textbooks, will be carried out with the help of Little KITES, Scout and other clubs in schools.
“The audio books will be completed by June 15. They will be collected by Kerala Federation of the Blind and will be distributed to visually impaired students,” the official said.
After assessing the efficacy of the project, SCERT plans to introduce it across all schools, the official added.