By Asha Shridhar | NGO Coordinator
Project – Help Blind students by donating braille books (55418)
Mitra Jyothi’s mission is to assist visually impaired individuals lead independent and dignified lives through Education, Communication & Technology, Training and Counselling, so as to integrate them into mainstream society at large. India has an estimated population of 15 million visually impaired people. The only means of basic education to these people is through braille. Availability of Braille books in local languages is extremely limited and non-existent for the rural poor. Apart from school text books, visually impaired children are completely deprived of reading material.
Mitra Jyothi prints text books in Braille for students of class 1 through class 10 (Karnataka State syllabus). Since 2017, we have been pioneers in providing text books in Braille free of cost to 30+ schools for the blind across Karnataka. Along with text books, books across various subjects including but not limited to fiction, non-fiction, inspiration life stories, cookery, sports, leaders, health & hygiene, legal rights etc are transcribed into Braille in Kannada and English for children of all age groups. These books are used to build Braille Libraries across schools for the blind in the state of Karnataka.
As on 31st December 2022, we have 4103 braille books in different versions. Mitra Jyothi, provides accessible reading material in Braille format to people with any kind of visual impairment (from low vision to complete blindness, to people at risk of losing vision with time) from economically backward and marginalized communities to promote education.
Two braille magazines - “Gyanna Samhitha”, a monthly magazine in Kannada and “Insight” a quarterly magazine in English are produced and printed in Braille and published from our Braille Press.
Helping visually impaired by publishing and donating braille books is an ongoing activity at Mitra Jyothi. Our library team continuously identifies books and converts them to accessible reading material in Braille format.
With fund support received through GlobalGiving, we produced the following books in the last two months -
Long term impact –
Your support will help us -
1. Create awareness and open up a new world of opportunities for the visually impaired.
2. Increase the literacy rates among the visually impaired community by donating braille books and audio books in accessible digital formats.
Process used at Mitra Jyothi to publish Braille books is listed below: Basically, we convert books to Braille format, proof read and save master braille copy.
Links:
By Sweta Lachhwani | Project Leader
By Sheeja Menon | Project Leader
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