Kerala IT sets up Activity Lab for differently-abled children, Audio Library and Vocational Centre for Visually Challenged

CM to inaugurate the new centre in Trivandrum on December 3, 2010

Trivandrum, December 1, 2010 – Hon’ble Chief Minister of Kerala Shri V S Achuthanandan on Friday, December 3, 2010 will inaugurate the new activity Lab set up for autistic children and an audio library for the visually challenged as a project of Kerala State IT Mission. Hon’ble Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs, M Vijayakumar will inaugurate the vocational centre, set up with an aim to provide gainful employment for the visually challenged students. KSITM is also celebrating the International Day for Disabled Persons by inaugurating this new lab. The new centre has been set up at Kumarapuram. This is the first occasion in India where IT deployment is being done to provide direct assistance for the children’s with special needs.

The activity lab, audio library and vocational centre is the result of the initiative undertaken by INSIGHT, a project of Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM) in association with SPACE (Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment) conceived to empower the differently abled - through computers, internet and other ICT tools. The initiative is to educate autistic children so that they gain fruitful employment.

“INSIGHT was conceived and set up with an objective to assist the differently-abled as productive members of the society. In this pursuit, INSIGHT has been conducting a wide variety of capacity building programmes for persons with disabilities or different abilities. We are happy to see our initiatives in this direction reaping benefits and the activity lab and vocational centre are the first steps in the right direction.” Said KSITM Director, Ms.Ishita Roy.

Insight is trying to improve the functional and academic flair of autistic children through free educational software packages like Gcompris. Children from different parts of the city visits Insight centre for training on basic computer applications. Insight has also imparted Gcompris software training for over 60 special educators from a number of special schools in the state. Insight is gradually moving towards teaching programming interfaces like Scratch for high functioning autistic children to help them explore their individuality. Special educators who underwent training at Insight opine that these software packages are highly useful in improving the academic abilities of an intellectually challenged child. Parents were also happy to note that these tools have attractive interfaces and interesting activities, capable of capturing the attention of their kids.

The audio library set up for the visually challenged children will have a collection of books recorded for them. The library already has a collection of over 100 audio books in English and Malayalam. The vocational centre has been set up with the aim to provide a way of earning for the visually challenged students. INSIGHT has undertaken an activity under the Malayalam Computing project as its maiden initiative.

INSIGHT is a project of Kerala State IT Mission (www.itmission.kerala.gov.in) with an aim of empowering of differently abled through IT. In this pursuit, INSIGHT has been conducting a wide variety of training programmes for persons with disabilities or different abilities. The INSIGHT Resource Centre at Vellayambalam has been providing in IT skills to persons with disabilities, mainly the visual challenged, on Open Source Computing tools. They are trained to effortlessly navigate the computer and to use the computer to facilitate day-to-day communication through employing ORCA screen reader technology. To enhance the credibility of the training programmes, INSIGHT has also entered into arrangement with IGNOU whereby the University would evaluate the performance of the trainees and award certificates.
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