Odiogo, Odiogo....

....how do you do this?

Few years ago I had an opportunity to visit the National Institute for the Visually Handicapped (NIVH), Dehradun, India. They have a huge collection of cassettes in their audio library. One elderly lady and a gentleman lend their voice to the literature available as text. Any one who is visually challenged can get a free access to the library. What one needs is a certificate of disability. Consequently, the cassettes are sent across & collected free of postal charges by the Department of Post. The NIVH does send a list of cassettes to listeners. The scheme is impressive, but the question is, how many are aware of it. Like most government run benevolent schemes, there is no publicity of the facilities offered.

The second issue is the kind of knowledge that can be audio-transcribed. Can it cater to the needs of visually challenged students? Or is it mostly meant to entertain the elderly ones who would otherwise read the religious texts? I don’t have an answer to that.

If someone does, let me know. The address of NIVH for those who are not aware of this facility and knows someone who can benefit is:

National Institute for the Visually Handicapped (NIVH)

(Under Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment)

116, Rajpur Road,

Dehradun 248001

India

Another potential way to enhance the access to knowledge could be an internet browser, which could convert the written text to voice. I am not aware if this exists or not.

Lastly, I wish to thank the odiogo.com for lending their voice to my blog. I hope someday, this could help some one with a piece of relevant information!

Odiogo, how do you do it? Is it a manual process or you use a word synthesizer like the one designed for Dr. Stephen Hawking? I wish some one undertakes such a task in India!

I would be interested to know!

Thanks odiogo!

Manish