Studio helps to record talking books for the visually impaired

Visually impaired students will now have audio textbooks to help them score higher marks on their exams. The Welfare Society for the Blind had introduced a Talking Book Project which will convert academic and reference books into audio CDs and cassettes to facilitate visually impaired students. The project's recording studio, Trinayan, was inaugurated this afternoon by Mrs Naina Lal Kidwai, the society's general manager and country head of HSBC India, at the training centre of the society.

This project will convert printed texts into audio CDs and cassettes to reduce the dependence of visually impaired students on readers. This will eliminate visually impaired students from waiting for readers to read out reference books and interpret texts. Moreover, the studio will be used to create content for radio programmes for visually impaired students and will become part of the community radio broadcasting services. It will establish guidelines for specific radio programmes on education, information, awareness creation and entertainment.

The radio programmes will be aired through existing radio channels until the creation of a separate community radio channel for the visually impaired is established. The state-of-the-art studio was fully funded by HSBC to further enable the Welfare Society to improve recording quality and their services. The society's main objective is to extend services for visually impaired students of different universities in the state.

While speaking at the inaugural occasion Mrs Kidwai said, “We have been the largest employer in the city and also encourage diversity within our workforce, i.e, offering employment to such students who happen to be the best people on the job.”