Make Braille must on all products: Visually impaired

rvinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, January 4

While World Braille Day was observed today, visually impaired persons demanded that Braille script should be made mandatory on all products and public places for their convenience.

For the first time last month, the United Nations had designated this day as World Braille Day underscoring the importance of the script. The day was earlier celebrated as the birthday of Louis Braille, the inventor of the script, which enables visually impaired to read and write through this system.

Jyoti Malik from Udaan Empowerment Trust that works for visually impaired persons said it should be made mandatory for all companies and organisations to use Braille to provide basic information in order to make visually impaired self-dependent in gaining any information.

In order to enable its widespread use, it should be learnt by all so that people not only become aware of it but also for enabling better communication with visually impaired persons, she added.

Puneet Soni, who won award for fastest reading and writing in Braille at the National Braille Challenge held in 2012, said the script should be taught in schools as well not only for creating awareness and familiarity but also for treating them as equals in society. “This will reduce the sense of pity towards visually impaired persons and lead to increasing cooperation with them,” he said.

He said though devices that convert normal text into Braille text had become available on e-commerce sites, still these were expensive. So some kind of discounts or subsidy should be made available in order to bring down the price, he added.