Use of Braille, a script that enables visually impaired and partially sighted people to read and write through touch, needs to be standardised and teachers further trained, said professor S R Mittal, who has been teaching visually impaired children for the past 30 years.
“It’s just the beginning in Bhutan and Bhutan should develop its own expertise in the field of disability rehabilitation,” he said, adding that even the teachers learnt the use of Braille on their own.
Professor Mittal, who is visually impaired, was in Bhutan for a four-day workshop at Kanglung, funded by UNICEF, on standardising Braille application to make the writing system for visually impaired people more systematic.
The Braille, invented by Louis Braille, who was visually impaired and became a teacher, consists of patterns of raised dots, of up to six, arranged in two lines of three dots each. Each cell represents a letter, numeral or punctuation mark.
Braille was introduced in Bhutan in 1973 when the national institute for the disabled (NID) in Khaling was established, but it was not standardised and teachers lacked formal training, said the programme officer of the special education unit, ministry of education, Pema Chogyel.
“We’ve followed the British system of Braille code so far. We’re trying to see different types of Braille code and standardise the usage,” he said.
In 2002, a Braille production unit was established, with technical and financial support from UNICEF and Christian blind mission (CBM) international, to help improve the situation of visually impaired students in schools in Bhutan.
Kinga Dorji of the Braille production unit said that, after the unit came up, they have been able to supply sufficient textbooks for all the students. “But getting the titles for some reference books are difficult still, as the softcopies weren’t readily available,” he said, adding that the unit still suffers from a shortage of skills and manpower.
Visually impaired students of Sherubtse college in Kanglung were provided laptops with screen readers under the Norwegian aid department (NorAd) project this year.
“We’re not sure whether the next batch, who’ll qualify for Sherbutshe will also get the same facility,” he said, as the students in Sherubtse didn’t have the transcribed textbooks.
There are 47 students and 13 teachers at NID, 16 students at Jigme Sherubling higher secondary school and four at Sherubtse college.
According to the population and housing census of Bhutan, 2005, about 3.4 percent of the population in Bhutan had some form of disability. Every year, about seven visually impaired students are enrolled in NID.
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