VV Nagar library shows vision for blind people

VADODARA: Prof Prateek Ashwin Shah, a visually-impaired teacher at Sojitra college, so far used to rely on limited literature that was available in Braille language for his PhD studies.
But now, Shah who is pursuing doctoral studies in the Department of Postgraduate Business Studies, has started using a special facility that helps him not only listen to books written in any language but also translate these using the internet — all thanks to Bhaikaka Library of Vallabh Vidyanagar.
The Sardar Patel University (SPU) installed a cusers of this library. The special facility of a screen scanner – Kibo – has been made available for the disabled students at the library, the largest facility in the education hub of Charotar region of Central Gujarat.
“With the help of this screen scanner, a visually impaired student can listen to a book written in any language in the same language. In addition, since this scanner is connected to Google translate through internet, it is also possible to translate the book into English, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi so that the student can understand the book written in any language in his own language,” said Shishir Mandaliya, the main librarian.
“There are limited documents or resources available in braille and it is too much costly to convert our regular book into braille. This Kibo scanner provides a better option to read all regular books and convert them into audio form,” said Mandaliya.
“We want more visually-impaired and disabled students of Anand and Kheda regions to take advantage of this facility,” he said.
The library which has been named after Bhaikaka, who had established SPU to cater to the educational needs of rural students, has a rich collection of 2.65 lakh books and reading material.
More than 3,000 members register every year to avail its facilities.