Chennai gets cyber cafes for visually impaired

SOFTWARE FOR BLIND: A help-group called Nethrodaya has set up a cyber café at Moggapair in Chennai.

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New Delhi: A help-group called Nethrodaya has set up a cyber café at Moggapair in Chennai. The cyber cafe is a first of its kind in the country, where visually impaired people can access Internet using the software called JAWS, provided by Bill Gates Foundation and Freedom Scientific.

G Govinda Krishnan, head of the help-group 'Nethrodaya', says, “For the past couple of decades, the visually impaired are finding it really tough to operate or to use computer media. It is not user-friendly, and we have to depend on someone to use the computers. The time has come where the Bill Gates Foundation and the Freedom Scientific have given a golden opportunity for the visually impaired to access computers."

The visually impaired students will no longer have to take external assistance to surf the net for information and what's more is accessible to people in the countryside as well.

Mari Selvi, a visually impaired M. Phil student says, “I am from a village where the computer facilities are not available. At a Cyber Cafe we get all the information that we need. Most importantly, in this centre the blind people can also access the internet which is useful for collecting information and all the study material."

The Tamil Nadu government has provided the land for the construction the building where the cyber café has come up. With the right kind of support, the horizons are definitely becoming brighter and wider for these special people.