Blind students studying at the University of Pune and its affiliated colleges in the district have reason to cheer.
 
In order to increase their pace of learning and enhance their academic potential, the Pune University Blind Student Learning Centre which functions under the Department of Education and Extensive Education, has decided to distribute special MP3 players to its students.
 
Some of the devices have already been handed out and the results have been encouraging.

Bidirectional Access Promotion Society (Bapsi) has released an Android app called PocketSMS, that allows visually impaired and hearing impaired individuals to send and read text messages (SMS) from their phones.

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) wants the human resource development (HRD) ministry to amend the right to education (RTE) law to ensure that disabled children have the choice to study either in an ordinary or a special school. ”The HRD ministry should amend the act to ensure that the RTE to all children with disabilities is safeguarded and that the choice to such children to study in an inclusive school or a special school is real,” said the draft guidelines framed by the council’s working group on the rights of the disabled. According to the NAC, while one view was tha

All was well with 24-year-old S Vinay Kumar till the day he was diagnosed with incurable congenital glaucoma. Rough days began as Vinay started losing his vision every day and finally lost it completely in 2007. "I was diagnosed with the disease in 2004 and went completely blind by 2007.

Only about 10 to 12 percent of the nation's blind population are able to read Braille, and some advocates are worried that the nearly 200-year-old system of writing for the visually impaired could be on its way out.

Michael Cush was born with vision loss and learned Braille when he was a child, but he hardly uses it now.

"It's just not practical in my day-to-day life, mainly because it is very laborious and expensive to produce and also it is not very portable," says Cush.

There is not much by way of reading facilities for the visually challenged population in the State. While the vast majority has to make do with the help of others who read aloud for them, the practical impediments of Braille system make text books largely unavailable.

Twenty-three-year old Mohana, one of the beneficiaries of the State government's free cattle scheme at Poorigamaanimitta village in Tirupattur panchayat union, expressed her gratitude to the government by taking proper care of the cattle and supplying 10 litres of milk each day to the Aavin milk cooperative society. This, in fact, brought the District Collector to her house in this small village and she fetched a shield in a gesture of appreciation and encouragement to keep up the good work.

The payment system in the city's cabs is about to be more accessible for the blind or visually impaired — and advocates say the move is on the money.

Creative Mobile Technologies, which powers the touch-screen systems inside half the cabs in New York City’s fleet of 13,000, will begin upgrading their existing technology to allow the visually impaired to know their fare and use the credit card payment system.

He's been blind since age 15. But nobody can say that Mason Ewing lacks vision.

Overcoming a nightmarish childhood, Ewing, 30, has been a successful fashion designer in Paris.

For the last six months, however, his mind has been set on Hollywood, where he hopes to create a teen comedy and a dramatic series for television.

Born in Cameroon to an American father and a Cameroonian mother and raised in France, his own life has been filled with drama.