BHUBANESWAR: In a big boost to visually challenged students, the Orissa Association for the Blind here has installed a computarised Braille production machine, promising supply of study materials with updated curriculum round the year.

 
The machine, donated by KAS Foundation, has the capacity to generate 250 pages an hour, much more than the existing manual Braille printing machine in Berhampur.

BALTIMORE (AP) — Chris Danielsen fidgets with the cell phone, holding it over a 20 bill.

 
"Detecting orientation, processing U.S. currency image," the phone says in a flat monotone before Danielsen snaps a photo. A few seconds later, the phone says, "Twenty dollars."

 
Danielsen, a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind, is holding the next generation of computerized aids for the blind and visually impaired.

A master degree student has developed talking books for the blind and is willing to disseminate the method to making them for others to produce teaching materials for the blind.

 
The blind students can hear birds chirping and learn the information of each kind of bird by touching the Braille alphabet and reliefs of bird pictures. Self-learning with talking books makes it fun for children. Before these books, they thought the sound of bird’s chirping was all similar.

Brian McKeever won his second gold medal at an IPC World Cup cross-country ski stop in Vuokatti, Finland on Tuesday.

 
McKeever, of Canmore, Alta., clocked 26 minutes 59.8 seconds to win the 10-kilometre race for the visually impaired with his brother Robin guiding the way to the golden spot on the podium. The pair also teamed up to win a 20-km race Sunday.

 
Russian skier Nikolay Polukhin was second and Frank Hoefle of Germany was third Tuesday. McKeever beat both men by more than three minutes.

A new contact lens embedded with electronic circuits could be the seed for "bionic eyes" that can see displays overlaid on a person's field of view, researchers say.

 
The minute circuitry could aid the vision-impaired or could be used to create tiny but discernible readouts offering data such as driving directions or on-the-go Web surfing.

 
Researchers at the University of Washington created the flexible, biologically safe lens—the first of its kind—using nano-scale manufacturing techniques.

Underground lifts, ramps, platforms thathave wheel chair access, toilets for the disabled—this is the Bombayhigh court’s vision to make railway platforms disabled friendly.     TheHC on Thursday sought a report on the facilities for disabled atrailway platforms in Mumbai. Hearing a public interest litigation onthe lack of such facilities, a division bench of Chief JusticeSwatanter Kumar and Justice V M Kanade asked lawyers Mihir Desai andSuresh Kumar to visit Mumbai Central station for verifying the groundreality at railway platforms.

The abacus method to calculate numbers has become a rage among school students not to mention the visually-challenged students of Devnar School for Blind who bagged four prizes at a State level Competition that was held on January 20.

T. Andalu, (9th std.) and G. Satya Veni (7th std.) bagged the first prize while CH. Gopal, a 7th Std. and Yugandhar, 9th Std. students won the second and third prizes respectively in the level one competition.

Over 50 students are being trained in Abacus as a part of a brain developing programme in the Devnar School for Blind.

Operation Eyesight Universal(OEU), a Canada based International Developmentorganisation dedicated to eliminate avoidable blindness, has plans to spend fourmillion dollars in