Making professional courses more inclusive

Through a new initiative, Karna Vidya Foundation is adding to the already existing e-book content for the visually impaired

Braille is among the most common knowledge accessing tools for the visually challenged. Increasingly, accessible EPub (short for electronic publication) has made learning easier and instant. A visually impaired person only needs to slide his fingers on the mobile device to read the content or listen to it.

In Chennai, Karna Vidya Foundation, a non-profit that has been empowering the visually-challenged through technology, launched into this space in 2017 by providing school textbooks in an accessible format. The pandemic slowed down the Foundation’s work in this space, but since 2023 they have been focussing on making textbooks more accessible where professional courses such as law, commerce and computer science are concerned. This initiative is also aimed at encouraging the visually impaired to opt for courses beyond English, Tamil and history (which are usually taken by the visually impaired) for higher education.

“We would have converted provided nearly 300 books in the EPub format since we launched into this space,” says K. Raghuraman, who is honorary advisor of Karna Vidya Foundation and assistant professor in English at Government Arts College in Nandanam.

Adaptability makes EPub user-friendly.

If a visually impaired person wants to switch from EPub to Braille it can be done easily. If they want to hear it as an audio that is also possible. Likewise, they can opt for a magnified version of the book.

The Foundation has been able to convert books with the help of a team of volunteers, who are mainly parents of children with different disabilities trained for this purpose.

Raghuraman, who is visually challenged, says EPub is yet to catch up in a big way, and conversion of books requires time and effort. There are multiple processes to go through.