City anchor: Now,visually impaired may access ‘bio-informatics’

“The response we got from the industry and academia was amazing. Mostly people with vision disability do not venture into science field,and especially applied science where computer software and the labs are not disabled-friendly. I myself found it very hard to pursue my course in bio-informatics because of user interface issues,” said Dhananjay R Bhole,coordinator,Advanced Technology Blind Student’s Learning Centre (ATBSLC),who is visually-impaired.

“Taking myself as a case study,I,along with two of my colleagues Ketan Kamble and Tushar Garud,prepared a paper and divided it into two parts — problems and solutions — so that others come to know what difficulties we face and what are the possible solutions to overcome these problems,” said Bhole.

Among the biggest problems faced by visually impaired students is their inability to look at diagrams,flow-charts and tree diagrams.

“There are also some ports such as gene port that is inaccessible for blind students. Hence,there should be software to read biological diagrams. Tactile diagrams too should be available. Screen readers and databases with blind-friendly interface should also be there,” said Bhole.

“Institute of Accessible Sciences,Purdue University,has shown interest in collaborative work with us.

Even Indo-American Assistive Technology Exchange has shown interest in our paper and in working in collaboration with us,” said Bhole.

Attempt to make UoP website disabled-friendly

The Advanced Technology Blind Student’s Learning Centre (ATBSLC) is working to make the University of Pune website visually-impaired friendly. “There is a team of ATBSLC professors who are trying to make the website disabled-friendly. Apart from this,we have an Accessibility Outreach Programme where we keep talking to various software companies and offer to help them in make their websites disable friendly,” said Bhole. He added,“Even if their employees are not disabled,their clients who search web for various services may be. Hence,if the websites of all companies are made disabled-friendly,the clients can easily get what they want and the companies too will improve their business.”