SOLUTION AVAILABLE - POLICIES REQUIRED

A Position Paper on use of ICT in Education for visually challenged students

by Dipendra Manocha

Students with print disability are significant part of educable group in the country. These students need their books in Braille or talking book format.

Production of Braille takes place by computerized Braille production systems. A computer document can be converted in Braille format using Braille conversion software. This Braille file is printed in Braille using Braille embossers. 95% of the work of Braille production is to prepare the computer document. All Braille presses produce these computer documents themselves.

Considering the fact that normal printing also happens through computer documents, it is hard to believe that Braille presses are forced to do all this effort again. For getting good Braille document we need a well formatted document where real structure of the book is marked up using html tags. Indian language text is required in Unicode based fonts.

Current computer documents of text books doesn't comply with these basic standards. Thus, process of Braille production begins after the print book is released in the market. Re-typing of the complete book takes a lot of time and often Braille books reach students very late in the academic year. There is a straight forward solution to this problem. Whenever a contract for publishing of textbook is given, State Education Board should ask for computer document of the book as one of the deliverables. This document should be prepared according to the specified format and standard.

International consortium of talking and Braille libraries have developed such a standard. The consortium is called the DAISY Consortium. This consortium has noncommercial government and non-government organizations as its members. Thus this group doesn't have any commercial interest towards these standards. Structured guidelines of this DAISY Consortium need to be adopted for asking for computer document of text book when it is being published. These documents need to be submitted to a central repository. Braille presses could then get these documents prepared and Braille production would then become convenient and children with print disability could get Braille or talking books at the same time as their visually able counterparts.

---

---

Del.icio.us  Digg it  Reddit  Yahoo Bookmarks  Google Bookmarks

Read all the responses to our call for suggestions, recommendations and position papers on ‘Defining a Roadmap for Building a National ICT in School Education Policy’

Papers | Suggestions | Write to us