At least 750,000 people in Bangladesh are suffering from blindness while approximately 253 million people in the world live with moderate to severe vision impairment, according to a recent study. And most of the vision impaired people belong to low- and middle-income families. There are many visually impaired people with a passion for books. Even though they cannot see, they are much eager to read poems, stories and novels like everyone else. But there are not many books in Braille available for visually impaired people. These books are also expensive.
The visually impaired have the same rights as we do. And it is not possible to bring an all out progress by keeping a group behind. We need to bring a change in our mindset about the visually impaired. And we hope the authorities concerned will work with the experts to design the right curriculum for providing Braille books free of charge to the visually challenged students.
Afroza Sheikh,
Dania, Dhaka,
ilcbd2008@gmail.com