Visually impaired cannot imagine life sans Braille

Aurangabad: Braille is a part and parcel of visually impaired persons' lives for 200 years even if there is advancement in information and communication technology.

Braille is named after its creator, Louis Braille, a Frenchman who lost his eyesight in childhood due to an accident. He developed the braille code based on the French Alphabet around 200 years ago.

Today, blind people cannot imagine life without Braille which has become the foundation for the development of new technology for blind people as the codes of the same script are used in the softwares and applications today.

Talking to this newspaper, Mankeshwar Babasaheb Badhe, a visually impaired teacher at a secondary school run by M S P Mandal said that some thoughts that audio-based technologies would reduce the requirement of Braille, but, technological advancements like Braille displays have continued to make Braille more accessible and available. “Braille script provides us access to spelling, punctuation and other aspects of written language which are not accessible through voice recorder,” he said. Badhe said that he is on all the top social media platforms just because of the Braille script.

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Blinds cannot imagine life sans Braille

Kailas Nikam, the headmaster of Taramati Bafna Blind School which was established in 1984 said that early Braille education is important for literacy, education and employment among visually impaired persons.

“Knowing Braille is the equivalent of learning to read and write print by someone with sight. So, Blinds cannot imagine life without this script though there is the availability of software and screen reader. Our school has 72 students in standard from first to 10th. In primary school, they are taught, Braille. Later, they are trained in using computers and the Internet,” he said.

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All cannot afford softwares & Apps

There are some software and applications available for blind people. But, not all can afford them. Mankeshwar said that one has to pay licence fees from some hundreds to thousands for using applications like Auto TTF, and NVDA. Kailas Nikam said that ‘George’ is fully paid software and its fees in lakhs.