Braille Press in city regains vision

The Government Braille Printing Press, at Tilak Nagar, in the city, which had once stopped functioning due to a snag in the machinery has resumed operations this academic year.

It is the only such press in Karnataka, printing and supplying about 13,000 Braille textbooks for over 5,000 visually-challenged children studying in 27 special schools every year.

“Half the number of books in demand have already been printed. The remaining books, required for the next semester will be printed soon. We have appealed for an upgraded printing machine (Braillo SR 600), which will be helpful in printing more books. The existing machine (Braillo 600) is a decade old, which is normally the machine’s expiry date,” said manager of the press.

The press had become dysfunctional in 2013 and started in February this year, due to technical problems and some software glitches. It still managed to supply books to schools with the help of old stocks and support from the All India Conference for Blind.

A Delhi-based firm, which is the authorised dealer and troubleshooter of the Norwegian printing machine, failed to repair the machine and it is alleged to have cheated the press by overestimating the cost of repairs.

However, personnel of a Mysuru-based company, Software Paradigm India (SPI), successfully repaired the machine and solved the software problems, without charging more money. Now, the press has complained against the dealers and sought permission from the authorities to turn to SPI in case of such problems in future.

For students from first standard to 10th, textbooks of subjects like Social Studies, Science, Political Science, Sociology and Economics, including language textbooks (Kannada, Hindi and English), are supplied by the press. Besides, grammar books, Louis Braille’s biography and calenders are printed for visually-challenged children.