NGO holds fund-raiser musical evening for visually-impaired

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, October 15

Saksham Punjab, an NGO, dedicated to visually-impaired children, in collaboration with HMV College, organised a fund-raiser musical evening by eminent Sufi singer Hans Raj Hans today.

Deepika Sood, general secretary, of the NGO,said the objective of the programme was to raise funds for the production of accessible digital talking books of under graduation level of Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU), Amritsar.

“With the help of these books any person with print disability can read books without any sighted assistance,” said Sood.

Since its inception in 2011, the NGO has done significant work in the area of talking books production.

As many as 500 titles in Punjabi, Hindi and English medium have been produced by the NGO for grade IX to XII of the Punjab State Education Board, GNDU Amritsar, Panjab University, Chandigarh, and Punjabi University, Patiala.

All talking books produced by Saksham Punjab are in the DAISY format.

DAISY is the international technical standard for digital audio books. It allows people with vision and print disabilities to navigate an audio book virtually line by line, perform search functions and place bookmarks; functions that are not possible in a conventional audio book.

Empowerment of visually-impaired individuals

Saksham Punjab is providing all possible technology-based tools like talking books, talking phones, talking computer accessibility software, along with digital notebooks and computer training to ensure that visually-challenged individuals, after being inducted into regular mainstream educational and economic environments, are able to operate and sustain themselves on a level-playing field with normal individuals.