This visually impaired shows way to others

Gagan K Teja

Tribune News Service

Patiala, January 4

While everyone seemed to be hit by the fact that I had lost my eyesight and life would get very difficult for me, I got my inspiration from the life of Louis Braille, who had not only given a ray of hope to me but millions others through the invention of Braille. Louis Braille had revolutionised the world of visually impaired by inventing the Braille script and had provided the path from the darkness to the light by opening the doors of education and I want to follow his footsteps for the betterment of visually impaired children.

This was stated by Dr Kiran, a completely visually impaired who is working as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Punjabi University. She lost her eye sight at the age of 19 years while she was doing BSc (Nursing) from Christian Medical College, Ludhiana. She was in her second-year when she suffered from brain fever that damaged her optic nerve and she became blind.

However, she did not give up and learnt Braille from Vocational Rehabilitation Training Centre, Ludhiana. She then taught Braille for 15 years to students of Institute For The Blind, Sector 26, Chandigarh.

While she was teaching, she completed her PhD by using Braille and computer with screen-reading software. As textbooks were not available in Braille, she converted these books with the help of her friends and colleagues. Presently, she is teaching in the university and using Braille as well as computer with screen-reading software for the preparation of short lectures.

Remembering Louis Braille on his 219th birthday, Dr Kiran says: “Though tremendous developments have taken place in the field of technology and today we are using a host of software with speech synthesisers, Braille has its own fundamental significance. Braille plays a significant role in the life of every visually impaired person”.

However, if a person loses his/her eyesight, no serious effort is made to introduce them to Braille, which further adds to the trauma of loss of sight. Therefore, my aim in life is to bring such children, especially girls, in the mainstream through promoting Braille so that they don’t miss out on fundamental parts of early and advanced education.

“In special schools, textbooks are available in Braille. But when these students enter into colleges and universities for the pursuit of higher education, they face many difficulties due to lack of Braille books. They have to depend either upon others for reading material or entirely on audio recordings, which are not always helpful. Therefore, the government should lay more emphasis to make the books available in Braille for higher education,” she said.