Laptops that can be linked to braille terminals given to visually-impaired children in J&K

The School Education Department in Jammu and Kashmir is going to distribute 42 laptops among children who are visually impaired to provide inclusive educational support through technological interventions.

The laptops will be connected to braille tactile terminals lying in the resource rooms, School Education Principal Secretary Asgar Samoon said.

"This will help the visually-impaired children to read and explore more learning resources from the internet," he said.

Braille terminals, which were previously procured under the Samagra Shiksha scheme, have limitations of storing data, but can scale up its functions once attached with the laptops, Samoon said.

Resource rooms have been established in all the 20 districts of the Union territory to cater to the educational, mental and health needs of the differently-abled children.

Samoon said the department was planning to set open these resource rooms for the public so that any visually-impaired person can visit and utilise this facility for upgrading their knowledge and skills.

He said inclusion was the need of the hour and, under the Right to Education, the department was making all efforts to include every child into the mainstream education system irrespective of any social or economical barrier.

Several initiatives like disbursement of stipends and allowances, distribution of free aids, appliances and learning materials have been taken to encourage children with special needs to pursue their education in the mainstream system, said Samagra Shiksha project director Arun Manhas.

"Every possible effort is being made to identify such children across the UT, especially those who are not enrolled, to provide them all kinds of educational, therapeutic and counselling support through special educators," Manhas added.