Just before the commencement of the recent legislature session, the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, Prasanna Kumar Pincha, was in Bangalore to review the implementation of the Persons with Disabilities Act in Karnataka.
Tarak Luhar, visually impaired since birth, was the first to withdraw money from the country’s first ‘Talking ATM’ installed by the Union Bank of India on Wednesday at the Blind People’s Association (BPA) premise in Vastrapur. The machine did the talking through the head phones and he would just run his fingers on the Braille keypad on the machine.
Bank chairman and managing director D Sarkar inaugurated the disabled-friendly machine with a view to assist the visually and physically challenged.
Call me Alisha. I can’t reveal my real name,” she says, as she speaks on the mobile with élan. At 24, she is as charming as Indipop singer Alisha Chinai. Her listeners are only too happy to hear a sweet voice enticing them for a mobile or landline connection.In just three minutes, Alisha manages to get a customer. What’s more, she handles 300 such calls a day though not all are ‘fruitful’. This camera shy Alisha’s face lights up when you talk ‘calls’.
Recently children — including hearing and speech impaired, mentally challenged, orthopedically impaired and even a batch of visually impaired — had trooped into the premises of Children’s Film Society of India (CSFI) to see the children’s films.
CFSI, as a part of a project, has been screening children's films in municipal and tribal schools for free. Needless to say the children were happy and enjoyed themselves thoroughly.
Within minutes of the tele-conversation, her customers are convinced into buying a mobile or a landline connection. Her enticing voice has listeners hooked on. So much so, that “some continue to talk, to just listen to my voice, wasting my time and theirs! I cut the calls when they do this,” says Alisha (not her real name).
Punarjot Eye Bank of Punjab held an awareness fortnight meet on eye donation. Punjab Health Minister R.C. Dogra, was the chief guest at the event. He acknowledged that due to the involvement of NGOs, eye donation and transplantation has got a tremendous boost in the state.
Dr Ramesh, the Director of Punarjot Eye Bank, stated that the eye bank had the support of allies in the ‘war against blindness’ and due to which their eye bank is able to reach out to poor and needy patients in the rural areas of the state, where there are few eye specialists.
In Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, two blind brothers, Dharam Chand Jain and Rajendra Jain run their grocery shops while their blind sister; Nirmala is working in a government school as a teacher.
Dharam Chand Jain has been running a grocery shop for the last 40 years and has in fact added an auto parts counter to his shop, recently. Rajendra Jain also runs a grocery shop and supports his family.
Both of them do all the buying and selling themselves and also even money transactions and their business runs smoothly.
Gallery Tom, in the quiet Shoto district of Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, recently held ‘Boku-tachi no Tsukutta Mono 2005’ (‘The things we made - 2005’) featuring about 60 works by children at schools for the blind from around Japan. This year, the works were expected to be included among a set of pieces to tour Spain, thanks to the Organizacion Nacional de Ciegos Espanoles (ONCE) which has been actively involved in promoting blind artists and helping young visually impaired people receive education.
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