lady Shri Ram College is set to come up with an Equal Opportunity Centre for students with disabilities, mainly the visually-challenged ones. A state-of-the-art resource centre has been formed to ensure accessible study material and provide a proper research environment to students with special needs.
It will be fully operational from July, 2013 and is equipped with latest assistive technology, including a Braille embosser, screen reading software, lex-Cam scanner, book scanner, daisy recorders, players and a laboratory with 10 computer systems with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
"Our college has the largest number of visually challenged students compared to other Delhi University colleges. At least 50 to 55 students with disabilities are admitted to the college every year and this year alone we have 11 students, who are visually impaired. The entire complex that has been built for helping such students is a part of our effort to reach out to such students," said Kanica Khandelwal, the media coordinator of the college. She said that the college was keen to uplift the disabled students with facilities to ensure equal treatment to them and also give them material to study in par with the rest of the students.
"College has a programme — 'REACH' —Reaffirming Equity, Access, Capacity and Humanism —that empowers students with social and economic disadvantages by making available opportunities for them. It initiated a centre Swavalamban to support students with visual disability through training in JAWS and SAFA software for them to understand subjects. Now, the new centre is completely dedicated to Braille software. It is more updated and they can also hear the books by scanning them chapter wise. The studio for recording and playing will also assist them in project work and other study material," Khandelwal added.
She said the resource centre facilitates the academic development of students and also ensures that they achieve their full potential and become self-reliant, independent and productive members of the society.
"I think every student comes with some ability that outshines the ability of other and all are weak at some point. By engaging them together in this centre, we are trying to push them to help each other and learn to overcome weaknesses," said Kasturi Kanthan, the admission convenor.