Arts courses in DU popular with disabled students

In Delhi University, humanities courses are the most sought after by disabled students seeking admission to the four year undergraduate programmme.

"Political science, history and Hindi of the humanities stream are the courses which most of the disabled students choose. There are also some who opt for commerce," said one of the counsellors at DU's Equal Opportunity Cell (EOC).

EOC facilitates the admission for PwD (person with disability) students.

The choice of humanities is mostly among the visually impaired, who constitute 50 percent of the disabled students that come to DU.

So far more than 160 PwD students have already submitted the offline optical mark registration (OMR) forms in the EOC alone, and 250 have made payments online.

Last year 623 students had applied and were admitted to several DU colleges.

With OMR forms similar to that of SC/ST, the disabled students can buy it from 18 different centres but most of them flock to the EOC.

The online and offline forms costs Rs.50 for the PwD.

"These students can go to different centres across Delhi, but most of them come to the EOC because we guide them and help them fill forms," Bipin Tewari, an EOC official told IANS.

The EOC had also instructed the centres to provide helpdesks, accessible spaces, making NSS (Nation Service Scheme) and NCC (National Cadet Corps) availability of wheelchairs and making at least two teachers from the enabling unit of the college as nodal persons for handling grievances of such students.

"I regularly check with the centres and the facility has been adequately provided. Some students also called me and said that the facility at south campus for them has been very good," added Tewari.

In order to bring inclusion, the head of EOC has also been providing counselling sessions.

"I recently visited the National Association of Blind (NAB) and counselled the students and provided them with braille bulletins and also advised them to choose colleges near their homes," he said.

The varsity reserves three percent seats for candidates having a minimum of 40 percent physical disability.

Three types of disability recognised by the varsity includes visual impairment, hearing impairment and the third being locomotor and dyslexia.

They are also given a fees waiver including examination fee, university fee, except admission fee, subscription towards Delhi University students' union and identity card fee.

Those staying in hostels are also given a concession of 50 percent in the mess.