It used to be an ordeal for visually impaired college students to read books at the University of Madras library as they needed a person to read them loud.
Now the university has solved the problem by starting a “talking library” with over 500 compact discs and audio cassettes.
Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Vice-Chancellor G. Thiruvasagam, who demitted office on Friday, said that the visually impaired students faced lot of hassles to read books in the university library as somebody had to sit with them to read out the books. Now, the varsity has come up with the concept of “talking library”.
“We have over 1,000 visually impaired students and others who prepare for civil service examinations coming to our library daily as we have several old reference books. In the first phase we have purchased 600 compact discs and cassettes from an NGO in Madurai,” he said.
Pointing out that the library would add more titles this year, Prof. Thiruvasagam said that the varsity spent `2.5 lakhs for the first phase of the project.
“A total of 17 students can use the facility at the same time and we will soon expand the facilities,” he said. Saravanan, a visually impaired student, urged the university to add more titles which pertains not only to civil service examinations but competitive exams like National Eligibility Test (NET) and State Level Eligibility Test (SLET).
“This facility will be of good help to us as we have a similar facility at Anna Centenary Library in Kotturpuram,” he said.
