Visually challenged students get audio notice board

Pune: The Modern College of Arts, Science and Commerce at Shivajinagar has installed an audio notice board (ANB) for the visually challenged students on its campus.

Some former students of a city-based engineering college made the notice board.

"The number of visually challenged students on the campuses of traditional colleges has been increasing every year. Currently, we have 11,322 students. Of them, 36 are visually challenged," said Rajendra Zunjarrao, the principal of the college.

"Whenever we make an announcement, our clerks types out the information and then the peon puts it up on the notice board. However, until now, the visually-challenged students had to depend on others to alert them about the notices. Sometimes, they even missed important announcements because they didn't know that the notices had been put up," said Zunjarrao.

To fix this problem, the ANB was installed on Tuesday near the principal's office. "The cost of the entire unit is Rs21,000. The Wadekar Foundation helped us out financially. The foundation also wants to help other colleges, especially blind schools, with ANBs," said Zunjarrao.

The machine has been ergonomically designed for easy use. "The clerk types the circular and sends it to the IP address of the ANB unit, where it gets stored. There are earphones provided near the unit. A student needs to put the headphones on and listen to the instructions. There are three other buttons, and an automated voice instructs the student on what to press to hear the notices. The software is in English but I am sure the students will be able to understand," said Zunjarrao.