City gets a library with books that you can feel

City gets a library with books that you can feel
Deccan Herald

To look at, it seems like any other library, with rows of books on fact and fiction. But it feels different. Quite literally so.

The library, inaugurated at the National Association for the Blind (NAB), Karnataka branch, on Tuesday, has books that are all in Braille.

Blind people in the City can now amble over to the library, whether they want to do some serious studying or merely kill time with some lighter stuff. The college student who wants to solve a thermodynamic equation, find out who won the Battle of Plassey, or balance books, has enough study material to keep him occupied for a while. (Textbooks for BA BSc and BCom are available.)

And after his examinations, if he would prefer to relax with some lighter reading, he could head towards the book shelf where the magazines and light fiction are placed neatly.

But, as Saroja Ramachandra, president of the NAB pointed out in her speech, Braille books tend to get a bit bulky. Which is why they have several of the story books, magazines and novels – both in English and Kannada – on cassettes. A ‘closed circuit television scanner’, which “enhances the residual vision for low-vision persons” has also been installed. There is a plan to get two more of these, she said. They will also be implementing ‘related activities’ like book discussions.

The library is open from 1 pm to 7 pm every day. The library is located in the NAB building in Jeevan Bhimanagar.

Prof B V Ramaswamy, retired professor from the Department of Structural engineering, Pune, said that he was pleased blind people could go about their normal lives better than before. It was because of the better technology available today, he said. Nanotechnology (which concerns itself with lengths on the scale of a billionth of a metre) also holds the key to help the blind man see light, he suggested.