New Delhi: The Advanced Centre for Informatics and Innovative Learning (ACIIL), Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), in collaboration with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, has organized a Digital Drishti Workshop for visually impaired students. As per sources, the workshop focused on basic computing and internet surfing while using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
In addition, sources told that the workshop intends to allow visually impaired students to operate basic Internet functions and social networking sites, and empower them for employment. Professor Kanan Moudgalya, Professor of Chemical Engineering at IIT-Bombay said that IIT-B has specifically named this workshop as 'Digital Drishti' as it aims to provide a digital vision to the blind with the help of spoken tutorials, which are software driven.
Krishnakant Mane, Consultant, Spoken Tutorial Project at IIT-B who himself is visually impaired said that the workshop which as a precursor to the Digital Drishti Project, will give an overview of the power of Linux-based screen readers to the visually impaired. The project is aimed at empowering visually impaired students with proper knowledge of digital technology for employment. The workshop is an introduction to the FOSS-based Orca screen reader on the Linux desktop.
