Hi, Sir, if this is for your next story, then I would want to put forth some vital inputs. Even now in India, despite a lot of success received from CBSE, there is a lot of insensitivity prevailing in the officials. For instance, premier institutes like IITs fail to understand that reasonable accomodations like alternate questions in lieu of the diagramatic questions that are impossible to interpret (especially those involving the concept of space) need to be provided. Yes, there are a lot of challenges, however people like Srikanth have gone ahead and done India proud too, he being the first blind international student at the prestigious MIT (though he too is facing certain practical difficulties, may be he could give a better take on that). Talking about the situation in India, let me put it this way, when I wrote to IIT Madras (JEE 2010 organisers) under RTI asking whether there are any reasonable accomodations, they replied:
The paper is set in such a way that blind students do not require any accomodations. On the other hand, analysis of the IIT JEE 2010 question paper reveals that at least 30-40% of the question paper is visual in nature, and at least 15% of this is not possible to be described. After all, who can describe complecated free body diagrams in mechanics? Several people are working as successful engineers abroad. In fact, NFB, US has a STEM division that looks after the Science, technology, engineering and Mathematics needs of the visually challenged. You may get in more info from there. I just hope that things change in the near future, and India too can have VI professional engineers. You may write in for any more help. @Also some AI members have completed B.Tech. in CSE through lateral entry into the 2nd year of the course. Hope they will reply and share their opinions/experiences. Also, I would suggest that this goes on the list, so that everybody is made aware of this new field believed to be impossible for VI. Hope this helps. Regards, -Kartik On 1/14/11, Kanchan Pamnani <kanchanpamn...@gmail.com> wrote: > Subramani, > I assume that this is for your next story. Then you must bring out the fact > that the visually impaired were not allowed to do science in the standard > XII. Slowly we are getting there. > > Ask Sam or Kartik for the new CBSE circular and ask Sam for the HSC > circular. Of course HSC is the board that conducts exams in Maharashtra. > Therefore may not be relevant for your story. This is the plus. > > The minus is that there was a Engineer from Karnataka who had only one eye. > He got stuck inbetween. Not disabled by the definition and therefore no > reservation. The new law is going to add this category too. At present it is > hopeless. in case you need this persons contact details ask Dr. Rajat. > > There are some studying Engineering and they had to go to court to get > admission. They will reply to you directly. > > There is one bright spark who wants to do it and I am sure he will get back > to you.Smile > > There are some who lost vision after studying and maybe working for a > while.Had to change jobs, rehabilitate themselves and start a new life. Some > have succeeded and some have fallen. > > The bottom line is computer engineering. > > When you finish send me your article. > > Kanchan > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Subramani L" <lsubramani.v...@gmail.com> > To: "accessindia" <accessindia@accessindia.org.in> > Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 12:38 AM > Subject: [AI] Engineering grads/students of Engineering courses > > >> Folks: >> >> Writing to the list after a long time. If any of you have a B.E. >> degree (in IT or IT related) or if you are pursuing engineering (with >> visual impairment), kindly write to me in private. >> >> Subramani >> >> > > >
