Help blind students by donating braille books

Project – Help Blind students by donating braille books (55418)

 Mitra Jyothi’s mission is to assist visually impaired individuals lead independent and dignified lives through Education, Communication & Technology, Training and Counselling, so as to integrate them into mainstream society at large. India has an estimated population of 15 million visually impaired people. The only means of basic education to these people is through braille. Availability of Braille books in local languages is extremely limited and non-existent for the rural poor. Apart from school text books, visually impaired children are completely deprived of reading material.

Mitra Jyothi prints text books in Braille for students of class 1 through class 10 (Karnataka State syllabus). Since 2017, we have been pioneers in providing text books in Braille free of cost to 30+ schools for the blind across Karnataka. Along with text books, books across various subjects including but not limited to fiction, non-fiction, inspiration life stories, cookery, sports, leaders, health & hygiene, legal rights etc are transcribed into Braille in Kannada and English for children of all age groups. These books are used to build Braille Libraries across schools for the blind in the state of Karnataka.

As on 31^st December 2022, we have 4103 braille books in different versions. Mitra Jyothi, provides accessible reading material in Braille format to people with any kind of visual impairment (from low vision to complete blindness, to people at risk of losing vision with time) from economically backward and marginalized communities to promote education.

Two braille magazines - “Gyanna Samhitha”, a monthly magazine in Kannada and “Insight” a quarterly magazine in English are produced and printed in Braille and published from our Braille Press.

Helping visually impaired by publishing and donating braille books is an ongoing activity at Mitra Jyothi. Our library team continuously identifies books and converts them to accessible reading material in Braille format.

With fund support received through GlobalGiving, we produced the following books in the last two months -

• Karnataka Welfare Association for the Blind, Bengaluru – 16 Books, 57 volumes to 23 children
• Nivedita Blind School, Yadgiri - 22 Books, 58 volumes to 17 children
• Navajeevan Blind School, Tirupati - 46 Books, 160 volumes to 83 children

 Long term impact –

• Inculcate the habit of reading in the visually impaired at an early age.
• Helps the visually impaired to be at par with mainstream community.
• Gives a visually impaired the confidence to pursue their higher studies.
• Reading and keeping abreast with current events helps to get them better employment opportunities and live independent lives without any discrimination. 

Your support will help us -

1. Create awareness and open up a new world of opportunities for the visually impaired.

2. Increase the literacy rates among the visually impaired community by donating braille books and audio books in accessible digital formats.

Process used at Mitra Jyothi to publish Braille books is listed below: Basically, we convert books to Braille format, proof read and save master braille copy.

1. Convert the PDF file to word using PDF converter or OCR based on the type of file (editable pdf/image pdf).
2. Edit it to accessible format especially for tables, images, magazine format to normal and correct mistakes if any.
3. Add breaks wherever necessary to indicate paragraph, chapters and other logical breaks as per Braille requirement.
4. Print the braille books, collate and bind.
5. Proof read and do random checks to maintain high levels of quality.
6. Pack and post to students pan India especially Karnataka.

Links:

• Mitra Jyothi, NGO for the Visually Impaired

This is a story of a 20-year-old boy, Kiran. Unfortunately, he was not gifted with sight and stood out as a single person without a family to lean on. He was born on June 16, 2002, in Harihara, Davanagere District. .

During his schooldays he got to know about Mitra Jyothi through one of his friends. He got to know about the braille books and library services that it provides. So he registered himself with Mitra Jyothi 3 years back and since then he has been receiving Mitra Jyothi’s services and support. He is currently pursuing his first year Degree program in Harihara.

Being a single man with no family, he stays back in his hometown and continuing to pursue his studies and get a job to support him economically.

Kiran says that Mitra Jyoti proves to be very helpful and supportive to pursue his education. Mitra Jyoti provides him with reading and writing materials in Braille format. He says that Mitra Jyothi’s braille books have been playing a vital role in his education as he prefers to read books rather than listening. Not only the education books have helped him but also he is a regular recipient of the braille magazine “Jnaana Samhitha”.

He says, Mitra Jyothi offers him a variety of opportunities that, with the necessary amount of hard work, will enable him to reach his aspirations and live a happy life.

Summary: Main objective of the project is to provide accessible reading material in Braille format to people with any kind of visual disability (from low vision and complete blindness to people at risk of losing vision with time) from economically backward and marginalized communities to promote education. We also produce books which can help the blind people to get awareness about the various opportunities or benefits available for them.

Mitra Jyothi has been issuing the braille books for different blind schools in Karnataka since many years. It has been a great help for the students in a great manner and to come up with flying colors. Since many visually impaired students prefers to read books in their primary and higher secondary education, our braille books have an important role in nurturing their education.