Kerala: Visual challenge not to bar teachers

Thiruvananthapuram: IT@School Project has started empowering the visually challenged teachers in ICT as part of schools going hi-tech. The training makes them capable of teaching much like others using appropriate contents. Over 200 teachers would be given training in the remaining days of May using a particular module, and the remaining 260 would get trained by July. K. Anvar Sadath, executive director of the project, said the training for regular teachers emphasise on subject-wise content developed entirely on free and open source software platform. The accessibility gaps of the software are assessed and then new customised packages are incorporated for the benefit of the visually challenged.

Earlier in 2011, IT@School had imparted basic IT training for all visually challenged teachers, which had received a special appreciation from MHRD. With the completion of the current training, Kerala would become the first Indian state to have trained all visually challenged teachers in ICT, which focuses on the possibilities of ICT in education, rather than a mere training on computers. The specific training includes activities such as preparation of documents and presentations which would assist in classroom teaching, language computing, digital content collection from the internet and their legal aspects, audio recording and video editing.

The educational applications which are used for the regular training are customised to their benefit. For this purpose, the free software based application for screen reading namely ORCA has been extensively made use of. The use of free software enables unrestricted customisation. The unique Sharada Braille Keyboard developed by Sathyaseelan, headmaster of Govt School for Visually Challenged at Kunnamkulam and his son Nalin has been included in the training package. Supplementing the training, IT@School would facilitate necessary computers at schools and would also ensure its access for the visually challenged students. It has also made arrangements for specific cluster training for visually challenged students on the same model as of 'Hi School Kuttikootam'.