Warren Logan’s hands skim the 15-century marble bust, tracing the lifeless eyes, the slightly agape mouth, the precisely chiselled fur.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s (Kansas City, U.S.A.) new touch tour is among programmes at more than 100 museums in the country that attempt to do what once was thought impossible - making art accessible and even visible to visually impaired people.
The Art Institute of Chicago (U.S.) offered the blind and vision-impaired people the opportunity to ‘see’ by touching replicas of a few of its most popular works.
The museum re-created a handful of its art on tactiles. The technology involves making replicas of artwork on portable, machine-etched plastic that enable visually impaired people touch and feel them.
For more than 50 years, both visually impaired and sighted people have found friendship and a helping hand in the ‘Friendly Circle for the Blind’. But the group’s monthly gatherings could soon become thing of the past as it has only 10 members now.
Based in the U.S., the group was found in 1953 to offer blind people an outlet to get out of the house and meet people. It had nearly 100 members then.
A five-day exhibition of art and craft products made by visually impaired children was held in Mumbai from December 7, 2005. It was organised by Happy Home and School for the Blind.
Inaugurated by actor Victor Banerjee, the exhibition highlighted the abilities of visually impaired children. "This is organised so that the public can learn about the abilities of the visually impaired children. They just need an opportunity to be independent and lead a meaningful life as contributing citizens," said Meher Banaz, principal of the school.
A slew of changes have been suggested to the Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.), Delhi and Ministry of Tourism, Government of Delhi, for its Bus Rapid Transit system. The proposed changes aim to provide a passenger-friendly transport system for all.
I.I.T.- Delhi's, Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme and RITES have been entrusted the task of planning and designing the system.
Disabled passengers have won new rights of access to airline travel in the European Union (E.U.). The European Parliament has adopted measures to ensure E.U. airports help disabled travellers with less mobility.
A report by the United Kingdom (U.K.) Cabinet Office’s e-Government Unit found that disabled people could not browse 97 per cent of official government sites in Europe, mainly because they ignored several known techniques for making the websites accessible.
Statistics released by the Ghana Eye Foundation (G.E.F.) at its launch in late 2005 indicate that out of the total population of 18.8 million (2000 census) in the country, 200,000 people are completely blind while 600,000 people are visually impaired.
Seventy-five per cent of the cases of blindness and visual impairment were due to avoidable and preventable reasons.
Cataract, glaucoma, trachoma, childhood blindness, refractive errors and low visions as well as diabetes and sickle cell retinopathy were cited major causes of visual impairment and blindness among Ghanaians.
In Singapore, a photo exhibition was organised where photographs were converted into tactile displays with captions in Braille exclusively for visually impaired people. This first endeavour has been made possible by the French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and the eyewear designer Alain Mikli.
The exhibition ‘Touch and See’ had the photographs titled ‘Earth from above’, which enabled the visually impaired people to touch and feel the photographs that were on display.
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