Braille Resource Center at the Central Library of the Central University at Kadaganchi village in Kalaburagi has opened a new world for research scholars like Shrikant and Panyan Sai Vinayak. Shrikant, a student at Department of Kannada, and Vinayak, a student at the Department of Linguistics, say the has given them new sight.
Deepa, a Second Division Assistant (SDA) at Bengaluru Rural Court, says the Braille Resource Center has helped her complete her bachelor’s degree. “CUK helped me in completing my graduation though I am blind. The Center not only provided the necessary study materials in Braille script, the teachers at the CUK helped me in studying the material and to appear for the exam,” she says.
The Center was set up after the initiatives of then Vice-Chancellor of Central University, the late Prof. M Maheshwaraiah, and Librarian of the Central Library of the Central University, Prof. PS Kattimani.
Kattimani and Maheshwaraiah used to visit Pandit Puttaraj Gawai’s Shree Veereshwara Punyashrama in Gadag frequently where they realized the struggles of the visually impaired in learning.
The Braille Resource Center was inaugurated by the then Chancellor of Central University of Karnataka, Prof. NR Shetty on October 28, 2018.
The objectives of the Center are to facilitate higher education of visually-challenged students by providing assistive technology to make them self-reliant and independent.
The Center also provides a resource ground for teachers and educationists to enhance their capacity to deal with students with visual disabilities.
Another objective of the Center is to create awareness among employers about possibilities of the students with visual disabilities if they are provided with assistive devices/software at workplace.
The Center also aims to facilitate their employability by providing a common platform for the visually challenged students and the corporate sector.
The Center also organises workshops and seminars for teachers to handle visually challenged students with hands on experience, etc.
At present the Center has basic facilities to serve the needy with ambition of having the best assistive technologies available for its visually challenged students with disability such as blindness and low vision studying in its post-graduate departments and to serve the student community.
The University intends to reach out to its visually impaired students to help them in higher education and enter the mainstream of society with self-confidence and dignity.
Gopal Dixit, Assistant Registrar, Central Library of CUK, used to provide technical support for converting regular text into Braille books and audio-books. Dixit said that the Centre has bought a Braille Index Basic-D V5 Braille Embosser, Lex Instant Reader and Scanner, NVDA audio software, and OCR Horizon (Multilingual) software. At the Center, regular text is converted into Braille and printed.
The Central Library of CUK has made books in various languages available in Braille and provides them free to the needy. In addition to Braille books, the library converts the same texts into MP3 format to create audio books using OCR Horizon software.
Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Battu Satyanarayana, said the university would continue the services to the visually impaired students across Kalyana Karnataka. The Center is in the process of signing MoUs with NGOs to expand services to the blind, Dixit said.
The library has conducted two workshops and trained 80 visually impaired students from Kalaburagi in association with the National Federation of the Blind (NBF), Bengaluru, and Enable India, Bengaluru. Most recently, it organised a one-day workshop titled ‘Vision Beyond Sight: Empowering the Visually Impaired’ in collaboration with Nava Kalyana Jyoti Janapara Vedike. This event trained 75 visually impaired students, with Prof. Kiran KT as the key resource person. He provided hands-on training, demonstrating how to listen to audio books, practice Braille reading, and addressing participants’ doubts.