TURA: For the first time in the history of education for the visually impaired in Garo Hills, students from the Montfort Centre of Education in Tura, an institution of St. Gabriel Brothers mission, had the opportunity to experience the art of reading maps of the world through the Braille system.
It was also for the first time in North East India that a Breaille Atlas of India was launched at a workshop. The introduction of the Braille Map will immensely help visually challenged students in mastering the subject of geography.
This opportunity was made possible for the students of the senior classes in the institute with the active support of the Gabriel brothers, the union government’s department of Science and Technology and Dr Tapati Banerjee, Director of NATMO and vice president of INCA.
Visually impaired children from Classes VIII to X of the Montfort centre were given two days of classes to learn Braille Maps in the workshop under the guidance of Dr. Sweta Banerjee, Scientific Officer, Dept of Science and techonology, Government of India.
The Braille Maps learning session focussed on India and highlighted Meghalaya state.
The last day of the workshop, held on Saturday, included a quiz programme for the participating students based on the Geography of India, General Knowledge and Map Quiz.
“Education system of India has been updated to inclusive setup where we can club up the entire general as well as children with special needs to learn under one umbrella. When we talk about children with disabilities, the visually impaired children are using various means to convey the information related to studies. Tactile graphics are a means of conveying non-textual information to people who are blind or visually impaired and may include tactile representations of pictures, maps, graphs, diagrams and other image,” said Brother K J Jose, Director of the Montfort Centre of Education in Tura which happens to be the one and only centre imparting special education for physically and visually impaired children.