A large gathering of visually- challenged school teachers from across the State, who had assembled under the aegis of the Vellore-Tiruvannamalai districts Blind Teachers Association, to take part in a seminar on assistive technologies, appealed to the State to provide them with advanced teaching aids such as laptops with white board display facility, audio books and Braille maps, to teach normal children more efficiently.
They requested the government to distribute free android mobile phones, embedded with assistive technology applications (such as GPS navigation system, speech to text and vice versa), which would help improve their quality of life.
On Monday, a training session on computer applications was provided to the gathering by ‘Inaiyathenral,’ a Google Email Group, comprising around 180 volunteers, most of whom were blind. Some of the visually-impaired teachers pointed out that all the district-level libraries should have facilities like audio books and voice-activated computer facilities to download materials for blind people. Perumal from Rasipuram, a part-time music teacher wanted the State government to make all blind teachers, who had been appointed with consolidated pay scale, as permanent employees.