E-participation of Visually Challenged A Case Study

Vijay Srinath Kanchi

Librarian & Asst. Professor, Department of Philosphy,
MJ College, Jalgaon-425002
vskanchi@gmail.com
Abstract: Moolji Jaitha College is a premier college of higher education in the
North Maharashtra Region of India. Having assessed the academic, research and
extension activities of the college over the past six and half decades, the National
Assessment and Accreditation Council, an autonomous institution of University
Grants Commission of India, conferred 'A' grade with a CGPA score of 3.63 on the
college. Bracing the additional attention that this covetous reaccreditation grade
brought on to it, the college decided to open its doors to the other disadvantaged
sections and turned its attention to visually challenged people. The college quickly
embarked on the project of setting up a facilitation centre for the students with
visual impairment so that they could also be brought into the fold of higher
education. Several accessibility measures have been incorporated by procuring the
digital scanning equipment, Optical Character Recognition software, screen
readers etc., apart from making the college website visually-challenged-friendly.
This paper aims to describe the ongoing project Dreamy eyes, initiated by the
college as a case study.

1 Introduction
In India, a great deal of populace living in semi urban and rural regions still are
unaccustomed to technology usage in their daily lives and so fail to take advantage of
vast information available digitally. This problem of digital divide is further aggravated
by the language barrier, as quite a few are not conversant in English, the langauge of the
digital world. While this is the plight of normal persons, persons with visual disability
find these conditions all the more challenging. This forces them to be away from
mainstream education. There aren't many support facilities available for the visually
challenged from the institutions of higher education in this region and so the small
percentage of students who somehow manage to complete their secondary and higher
secondary education are left with no option but to move on to major metropolitan cities
to pursue their higher education. The statistics reveal that India has the largest population
of global blindness - of the 37 million people across the globe who are blind, about 18.7
million are from India. 1. The National Federation of the Blind Maharashtra (NFBM)
estimates that there are seven to eight hundred thousand blind people in Maharashtra
alone2 while the census records of 2001 as shown by the minstry of social welfare,
Government of Maharashtra show a figure of 5,80,930 for the blind3. The North
Maharashtra Region being less developed than rest of Maharashtra has fewer facilities
for visually challenged. There is only one school for the blind in a place called

Chalisgaon which is about 100 km., away from the Jalgaon city. Another blind school in
Jalgaon city has virtually no activity going on as there is hardly any infrastructure worth
reckoning there. The National Association of Blind, Jalgaon chapter has provided the
following figures that were collected in a survey during 2006-07.
S.
No.
1.
2.
3.

Area
Jalgaon Taluq
(excluding City)
Jalgaon City
Jalgaon District

Male

Female

Total no.
of Blind

61

26

87

263
1049

151
393

414
1442

Table 1: People with Visual Impairment in Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

2. Technology - A Great Boon To The Visually Impaired

Before the advent of the information and communication technology, the world of the
blind was virtually dark with only one window called Braille script. Visually impaired
(VI) persons could gain the information about the world around them only through the
limited window of material published in Braille. This greatly reduced the avenues of
learning to the visually disabled and resulted in their economic impoverishment. Further
visually challenged were deprived of the oppurtunity to mingle with the people with
sight and learn about the world around them, as they were sent to specail schools
offering Braille teaching. However, the technological advancements in the recent times
particularly in information and communication has radically transformed the whole
scenario and made the lives of the blind easier. Now, the new technology supplants the
visual impairment with solutions that were never before available to them. So much so
that the on screen readers let the visually challenged to use their computers with so much
ease that they can read newspapers online, send emails, read ebooks, listen to audio
books and whats more, if the file is saved in a format suitable for VIs such as DAISY,
they could even get the feel of the pictures, graphs, tables and other visuals as well!
They could actively participate in the learning process in a regular school alongwith
other students with sight, by carrying with them gadgets like Angel voice recorders to
take down the notes and listen to it leisurely at some other time. This way, thanks to
technological advancements, instead of joining a special school for the blind, they could
be part of the mainstream education and enjoy the sense of equality with others. Further,
the traditional white stick of the blind man now comes with low frequency sound
emitters which informs the VI about the obstructions on the path. The ATM machines of
many banks are now being made accessible to Vis so that they could operate the cash
withdrawals on their own, without the aid of anybody. Similarly if a website is made
accesible to VI, it could greatly help them access information whiich in turn contributes
to their improved living standards.

2 Dreamy Eyes The E-participation Project

The college has conceived a project titled Dreamy eyes to ensure inclusion of visually
impaired in the mainstream higher education. A facilitation centre with the same title
was established in December 2012 and a workshop demostrating the accessibility
solutions such as talking gadgets (thermometers, weighing machines, liquid level
indicators, etc.), online accessing of newspapers and magazines using talking software in
laptops, talking mobile phones etc., was organized in which a good number of Vis from
Khandesh region participated. The centre procured JAWS talking software, Devnagari
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, Angel voice recorder, high resolution
digital camera for scanning reading material and other necessary gadgetry. A couple of
computer terminals in the electronic reading room of the library known by the name
Digital Learning Resources Access Centre have been exclusively dedicated for the
prospective visually challenged students. Scanning of the syllabus related material and
and creating a dedicated database was initiated, as the latest amendment to the Copyright
Act of India in 2012 clearly allows such activity for better accessibility 4 for the people
with visual impairment. With the help of a few volunteers from within the college, the
syllabus content needed for the VIs was read out and recorded in a studio so that such
audio material could directly be put to use by the students with visual impairment. For
optimizing the accessibility of the reading material, the files needed to be saved in
DAISY format. It was soon realized that the college website is also to be made
accessible to the visually challenged.
2.1 Website Accessibility
The college website is the gateway for receiving information on various courses and
programs offered by the college. It also provides various useful links that provide
government and university related circulars, notices and information. The library section
of the college website also provides a list of links to other websites offering electronic
reading material. The website is also an interface for submission of applications for
various courses and efforts are on to conduct admissions through online mode only for
the courses and programs offered by the college in the next academic year.
With respect to enhancing website accessibility for people with various degrees of visual
impairments inclusion of website accessibility features such as the following are being
identified and implemented. Some of the most common eye disorders such as
Retinopathy, Glaucoma, Cataract and Retinitis Pigmentosa in which the strength of the
vision gradually deteriorates, the contrast sensitivity of the eye is greatly affected
causing insensitivity to different levels of brightness and similar shades. To help such
persons with low vision, a second version of the college website with greater contrast is
being considered for design. The webpages are being recoded with semantically
meaningful HTML so that the visually challenged can have easier maneuverability and
navigability across the webpages using the text to speech software. The measures
include providing textual description for images, easy to understand descriptions to
links, etc. Keeping the webpage viewers with low vision in mind, the facility to scale
the images and view them enlarged is also being incorporated. The webpages are being

redesigned using alternate stylesheets with regular and larger font sizes, ensuring the
layout of the pages is not compromised when text-only zoom is enabled in the browser.
In case of webpages where a lot of description is present, text only versions are also
being offered so that such text can be manipulated suiting the requirement of the user.
For people with color vision deficiency, use of red and green colors are minimized as far
as possible. A lot of standard keyboard shortcuts are also incorporated into the webpages
ensuring easier navigation with keyboard and reducing the use of mouse cursor.
Visual Impairment
Blindness
Webpage
development
using Semantic
HTML
Textual description
for images& links
On screen text
readers
Keyboard shortcuts
for
easier
navigation.

Low Vision
Text Enlargement
Options
Facility to scale
images
High Contrast design
Use of alternate style
sheets.
Text only versions of
webpages.
Development of
Second Version of
Website

Color Blindness

Minimal use of red &

green colors.
Keyboard shortcuts
for easier navigation.

Figure 2: Different Kinds of Visual Impairments and Web Accessibility Options Incorporated

It is also realized that the use of college website can be greatly enhanced if the website is
made available in other langauges. Using the Google's free online language translation
service that instantly translates text and web pages, language translation plug-in tool is
added to all the webpages of the college website. Thanks to Google Traslate, now the
college website is available in over 60 languages, of which six are indian languages.

3. Present Status
The centre signed Memoranda of Understanding with several voluntary organizations
working for the cause of VIs and conducted several workshops and training programs.
Since the centre was newly established and did not have the technical expertise to
produce DAISY format books, the centre approached Technical Training Institute (TTI)
located in Pune, Maharashtra for support. The college also entered into a Memorandum
of Understanding with TTI for such support. With tthe help of TTI the centre organized
several workshops on Reading Without Seeing, Use of technology for Improved
Lifestyles etc. Another workshop on Reading and Typing in Marathi using Non Visual
Desktop Access (NVDA) conducted by the centre received great response from the Vis.
The centre also conducted the first state level two day conference of VI teachers in
association with National Organization for the Blind, Vasai, Mumbai to bring to the
limelight the challenges faced by the VI teachers in their day to day lives in general and
in imparting education to others, in particular. As on July 2015, the Centre is serving

over 15 visually challenged students by providing them with educational material in

accessible formats, conducting frequent specialized training programs and workshops
and offeing training in computer, touch screen mobile handling, spoken English
programs, etc. The Centre, keeping in view the needs of old generation VIs who are
accostomed to Braille reading material, has procured Braille printer and Braille books
are being produced by the Centre and subscribes to Braille magazines. The Librarian of
the college is acting as the Administrative Coordinator and a VI is appointed as a full
time Academic Coordinator.
The mechanism conceived for making available the syllabus related reading material to
the students with visual impairment is graphically represented hereunder:
Identification
Material

of

Syllabus

Related

Digitization Using high end Digital Camera

Data Storage in dedicated

computers of electronic reading
room (DLRAC) of the Library

Scanned image conversion

into Rich text format using
Devnagari OCR software

Conversion of Audio Output

usingJAWS/NVDA software

Visually
User

Challenged

Recording of
Classroom
Lectures
through Angle
voice recorder

Soft Copy
Sent to TTI
for
Conversion
into DAISY
Format

Audio
files
directly
received
from TTI

End

Figure 1: Dreamy Eyes project: Inclusion of Visually Impaired in Mainstream Higher Education

4. Conclusion
The technological advancements witnessed in the recent times have the potential to
considerably ease the difficulties faced by the visually impaired in functioning
normally in their day to day lives and accessing the information that has the
potential to transform their lives. With a little bit of effort on part of the
administrators, these less advantaged groups can also be brought into mainstream
and enable them lead a decent lifestyle.

References
[1] Natl Med J India. 2001 Nov-Dec;14(6):327-34. Estimation of blindness in India from
2000 through 2020: implications for the blindness control policy. Dandona L, Dandona
R, John RK.Source International Centre for Advancement of Rural Eye Care, LV Prasad
Eye Institute, Hyderabad, India. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11804362
[2] http://www.nfbm.org/Img/nfbmpride.pdf
[3] http://www.maha-socialjustice.gov.in/index.php/2011-08-26-07-12-23
___________________________
A national survey done in 1986-89 reported that 1.5% of the Indian population (12 million people) was blind
with a presenting visual acuity of < 6/60 in the better eye. Recent population-based data on the age-, sex- and
cause-specific blindness rates from the Andhra Pradesh Eye Disease Study for the entire age range were
applied to the population distribution of India to estimate the number of blind persons in 2000. The number of
blind persons in India in 2000 was estimated to be 18.7 million (95% confidence interval [CI]: 15.2-22.3), of
which 9.5 million were cataract-related and 3 million refractive error-related. If there is no change in the
current trend of blindness, the number of blind persons in India would increase to 24.1 million (95% CI: 19.728.4) in 2010, and to 31.6 million (95% Cl: 26.4-36.9) in 2020.
4

Section 52 (1)The following act shall not be an infringement of copyright, namely:

(zb) the adaptation, reproduction, issue of copies or communication to the public of any work in any accessible
format, by
(i)
any person to facilitate persons with disability to access to works including sharing with any
person with disability of such accessible format for private or personal use, educational
purpose or research; or
(ii)
any organisation working for the benefit of the persons with disabilities in case the normal
format
prevents
the
enjoyment
of
such
works
by
such
persons:
Provided that the copies of the works in such accessible format are made available to the
persons with disabilities on a nonprofit basis but to recover only the cost of production.