Coming as a boon for blind persons across the country, Bharti Braille services have now become online. Now the classics like Ramayana, Mahabharat, Ramcharitmanas and Tagore's Gitanjali can be accessed anytime.

This is definitely going to boost the literacy percentage of the country, opined manager, Raj Blind School, Dr Veena Singh while talking to TOI. She said, "We cannot achieve total literacy in our country without knowing Braille script". She further said that 285 million people are visually impaired across the globe in, which 39 millions are blind and 246 millions have low vision". India is now home to the world's largest number of blind people. Though 75 % blindness can be avoidable it is due to acute shortage of optometrists and donation of eyes for treatment of corneal blindness that this number as risen to such a level, she claimed.

She was of the view that knowledge of Braille script at primary level of education should be included as well as awareness campaign of eye donation camp should be organized. While the world is all set to celebrate the birth anniversary of Louis Braille on January 4 - the founder of Braille script, a series of events would be organised in city on Saturday.

Highlighting about Braille script, Dr Singh said, "Bhartiya Braille is a largely unified Braille script for writing the languages in the country. When India gained independence Braille script was in use in different parts of the country for different languages. By 1951 a single national standard has been settled on Bharati Braille, which has been adopted by Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh."

Bharati Braille alphabet use a six dot cell with value based largely on English Braille letters are assigned as consistently as possible across the various regional scripts of country as they are transliterated in Latin script, so that for example - Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and English are rendered largely the same in Braille, she informed.

Source: Times of India