Blind students in Kerala can listen to books recorded in their friends’ voices

The State Council for Educational Research and Training in Kerala is working on the finer details of a project under which school students in the state will record audio books for children with vision impairments.

For children with vision impairments, reading textbooks or other prescribed study material can be quite challenging. Not all the books are available in Braille and nor are many students well versed in the Braille script.

To overcome these challenges, the State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT) in Kerala plans to convert text to speech. Even better, the voice reading out the material could be that of a friend or a schoolmate.

School students to record books for visually impaired classmates

This is part of a project called Shrutipaadam that the SCERT plans to launch in partnership with the Kerala Federation of the Blind Teachers Forum. The idea is to record audio books for blind and low vision students with the help of school students. 

The details of the plan will be worked out in a meeting between teachers from the forum and representatives of SCERT. Awareness camps will also be held in schools until 31 March where the importance of voice donation will be highlighted.

Awareness camps on voice donation planned

“Five schools from each district will be selected for the programme”, said a SCERT official to The New Indian Express. Fifteen students will be selected from the schools to produce the audio books. “We are planning to bring out at least 300 audio books as part of the project,” said the official.

The work on the audio books will be done with the help of clubs in schools. The audio books will be completed by 15 June says SCERT. “They will be collected by the Kerala Federation of the Blind and distributed to visually impaired students,” said the official.

If the project is effective, the SCERT plans to introduce it across all schools.

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