I am delighted to participate in the Concluding Function of the Silver Jubilee of All India Confederation of the Blind. My greetings to all the members of the Confederation, ophthalmologists, optometrists, medical social workers, medical technologists and distinguished guests. I am happy to know that the Confederation has made many important contributions towards removing the pain of visually challenged persons. I would like to discuss on "Capacity building for visually impaired".

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation process should aim at enabling persons to reach and maintain their optimal physical, sensory, intellectual, psychological and social functional level. It has to include measures to provide and restore functions to compensate for the loss or absence of a function. It should include from more basic and general rehabilitation to goal-oriented activities, for instance vocational rehabilitation.

Training is an important educational mechanism to remove the disabilities. We have recently come across one interview with a wrestler who is kneeless and handless. The training from childhood, will power to be on own and above all the willingness of benefactors with love and compassion to go all out to help such special persons, demonstrate that the special abilities can be built.

Dr Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University is one of the most accomplished physists of our time. This great scholar was affected by motor neuron disease which deterioted so much that threatened his research career. His speech became slurry and many people predicted that he would not live to complete his Ph D. His determination and the help that he received from modern technology and from some close friends, made sure that he not only lived to complete his Ph.D but also made the most enviable contribution to Physics, the string theory. He is a great living example in radiating the confidence to win in the midst of number of physical disabilities.

Conquest of Vision Challenges through Technology Tools

I met number of people who have fought and conquered the vision challenges. Particularly on 23-Aug-2004, I met Mr. Asif Ali who shared with me his experiences in overcoming the vision challenges that he faced during his teen age and how the technology tools such as screen reader software using with the laptop helped him to continue his studies up to post graduation level. He is able to read electronic books, send emails, participate in seminars and presentation and feel very normal and able to carry out his day-to-day activities. Now he is a confident engineer, he takes class in the Symbiosis school. Technology has enabled him to overcome the problem though at a high cost which he is able to afford. I am sure many may be able to benefit from this experience but we have to make special effort to make the technological tools available to them through societal mission at an affordable cost.

I am thinking how these technologies can be made available to common people, who are challenged by the vision difficulties. If the software and hardware for the visually challenged persons are available at an affordable cost, if the software is accessible through web, then certainly it will reach the needy and will be of help to them to overcome the problems. In this effort, in Rashtrapati Bhavan, as a first step my friends have developed a "Speech Applet" which provides a speech interface to my website for the visually disabled persons and has been released on 26 Jan 2005. It has been made available to all, through my website for download, so that it can be configured at their web servers to provide a speech interface for the visually challenged persons. It has been used by many institutions that are imparting training to the visually challenged persons for making the content available and accessible. It has also been used by visually challenged individuals. On an average there are 8000 hits on this site and around 4500 used the applet for reading the text. You can download the "Virtual Vision" software from .

In addition, I would like to mention that Arushi, a NGO based in Bhopal has made Braille of the English version of Wings of Fire and Ignited Minds and they are giving to the blind schools at the cost price. Similarly, Shri Gandhi Kannadasan has made the Braille of the Tamil version of Wings of Fire and is supplying free to blind schools and social organizations. Arushi has also made the Braille of 140 exhibits of the Rashtrapati Bhavan Children's Art Gallery in both English and in Hindi. We have made the Tactile Garden with Braille board to explain about the herbal plants and flowers. Over thousand children are visiting this garden every year.

As a next step, we are working with the R&D institutions to integrate the speech interface with the open source operating systems in English and other Indian languages. In order to make it available in a cost effective manner, we are working towards providing a speech interface through the indigenously developed handheld PC called "Simputer" to visually challenged persons. These hardware, software integrated system can be called as "Virtual Vision". The government agencies and various private organizations can take up this mission of development and production of "Virtual Vision". Now I would like to discuss the Pyramid model developed by Dr. G.N. Rao, President, International Agency for Prevention of Blindness for providing comprehensive eye care to all the visually challenged people in the country.

Investment in eye care

The pyramid model of eye-care delivery as focused by Dr.G N Rao is an excellent roadmap. It involves creation of a four tier system of treatment namely primary, secondary, ter-ti-ary and advanced ter-ti-ary care. In India, we have 20% vision centers for primary care, 70% service centers for secondary care, 50% training centers for tertiary care and 25% centers of excellence. We need to double the investment to provide full compliment of eye care facility for all the four sectors with participating eye centers, government agencies, international partners and social organizations. This funding should also be available for carrying out research and providing virtual vision to the needy personnel.

Implementation of Disability Bill

I would like to emphasize that government institutions should respect the Disability Bill which provides three percent job reservations for differently able persons. There must be a mechanism for effective monitoring of adherence to the Bill by the concerned ministries and departments, so that the differently able personnel are able to lead an economically independent normal life. I have seen few states have taken initiative on their own to assist training and absorption in governmental units. All of us have the responsibility to help such persons. Much more than the legal provisions are the need to empower disabled persons with right type of knowledge, skills and technology. Then alone they will have the fullest self-esteem.

Conclusion

The 2001 census indicates that over two crore people suffer from different types of disabilities. The category wise distribution of disabilities is as follows: visual one crore, locomotors sixty lakh, mentally challenged twenty-two lakh, hearing thirteen lakh, speech sixteen lakh. The largest number of disabilities is either visually challenged or movement disability. Hence, all the effort must be directed towards finding technology tools for removing the visual impairment in a time bound manner. The work done in removing this pain is definitely God's work. I would request the NGOs, corporates, academicians, philanthropists and the government to join together for finding lasting solution to make the life of these two crore people in the country productive. This I would consider a great contribution towards human resource mobilization for the national development mission.

Meanwhile we require an innovative and caring mind to provide productive employment to the disabled persons. To achieve this a committee of experts including representatives from corporate and voluntary sectors have identified around 120 occupations at executive/management/supervisory levels and around 946 occupations at skilled/semi-skilled/unskilled levels including call centers for employing disabled persons without compromising the quality of work. Organizations and industry should voluntarily come forward to offer some of the occupations to the disabled so that they can realize their economic independence and free them from the pain of disability. I was happy to find that one of the food processing industries in Erode is employing 200 differently abled personnel particularly visually challenged in all their production activities from manufacture to packaging of Masalas. Also I saw in Coimbatore some visually impaired people are being employed for medical transcription by a BPO industry.

To mark the 60th Anniversary of Mahindra & Mahindra, on 2nd October 2005 at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the management decided to donate 60 cochlear implants to hearing impaired. I inaugurated this programme. The corporate groups and social institutions and Government organizations can do similar missions for the visually impaired persons.

Once again I congratulate all the Silver Jubilee award winners and winners of the National Dance Competition Award. My best wishes to all the members of the All India Confederation of the Blind in their mission of providing better quality life to the visually challenged persons.

May God bless you.

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