Parliament library with assistive tech accessible to visually challenged

Visually challenged people will now have easier access to the vast repository of resources in the parliament library which is now equipped with necessary assistive technologies, officials said.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Tuesday inaugurated special facilities that provide visually challenged people access to more than 1.7 million publications and resources in the library, they said.

Birla took the initiative after he found that visually impaired people were facing difficulty in accessing the library for want of digital visual aids.

After consultations with institutes and domain experts, the Lok Sabha Secretariat procured necessary hardware and software to assist such people to access library resources, officials said.

Visually challenged people will be able to listen to the contents of the screen in Indian accented voices, read, translate, digitise, take audio output for any printed books, and listen to physical books, they said.

Persons with partial blindness who can operate computers will be able to magnify the contents of the screen through magnifiers, while those having hearing impairment can have access to screen contents through Braille devices, a senior official said.

He said the parliament library has also subscribed to Sugamaya Pustakalaya, India's largest online library of books with access to more than six lakh book titles. These books can now be accessed by fully visually challenged people using a daisy player.