The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Study materials for visually-impaired on audio CDs

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 01, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Study materials for visually-impaired on audio CDs

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, JAN. 31. Nethrodaya, a non-governmental organisation for the visually-impaired on Sunday inaugurated its Braille Library-cum-Research Centre, a project aided by the State Government.

C.K. Gariyali, Secretary, Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department inaugurated it. Visual impairment was no hurdle to come up in life when hard work was put in the right direction, she said.

The State Special Commissioner for the Disabled recommended an allocation of Rs. 5 lakhs out of the lottery fund for the establishment of the library and training centre, C. Govindakrishnan, founder of Nethrodaya said.

The centre also has a recording studio, the first of its kind in the State, he said. "Using the facilities, all the study material for college-going visually-impaired students will be digitally recorded and duplicated and made available as audio CDs and cassettes by the blind, for the blind," he said.

The study materials will be provided free. Visually-impaired students who were dependent on volunteers to read out their lessons could become independent and increase their study hours using the audio CDs.

The centre will make them self-reliant, he said. Written texts are being converted into audio format using the latest Nuendo 2.0 version software for recording.

Thippu, playback singer, assured support for fund-raising programmes.

Binoy Gupta, Chief Income Tax Commissioner, donated Rs. 10,000 to Nethrodaya.

He presented the Nethrodaya awards instituted to recognise the outstanding achievements by the visually- impaired people to Thiagarajan, retired principal of the Poonamalee Blind School, Rajagopalan, astrologer and lecturer at NKT Engineering College, Amalraj, who won the best teacher award twice from the President of India, Veerakumar, the first blind person to become a legal officer in a bank and Radha, a professional singer with an M.Phil in Music.

White canes were given to the visually impaired on the occasion.

Nethrodaya's helpline is: 26565012.

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