To read a book is a wonderful experience. But imagine the plight of the visually-challenged. Forget fiction and non-fiction, even mandatory reading material such as school and university textbooks, user manuals or class notes are, in a way, out of their reach. The biggest paucity they face is lack of reading material in forms they can access, such as digitised e-text or talking books.
But now, visually challenged Randhir Kumar in Delhi and Lakshmi Devi in Chennai who are both pursuing a degree in Economics, can exchange not just textbooks, but also their class notes through bookbole.com, a site created by Chennai-based Rahul Cherian and his friends, Sachin Malhan and Reuben Jacob. “It takes days for an individual to convert a book into an e-text. Earlier, this effort was being replicated needlessly at different places, and very little reading material was available for visually-challenged persons,” says Prashant Ranjan Verma, who runs a resource centre for visually-challenged persons at Delhi.
Bookbole.com has changed all that. The visually-challenged can now upload, exchange and share a massive pool of reading material. If there is a book they wish to read that is not already there on the site, they can place a request. Chances are that one of the 2,000 world-wide users of this site will pitch in and upload the book. As Prakash, father of 10-year-old Rohan, who has even been uploading his son's class notes on the site, says, “We are only helping ourselves.” It is like building a storehouse of knowledge from which visually-challenged people can empower themselves — digitally.
“If Kevin from Holland shares his accessible biology notes with Rajat from India, and Nick shares his accessible collection of Gandhi's writings with Shanti from Sri Lanka, then we have a solution like no other,” voices Sachin. As copyright laws around the world and U.N. charters on disability promote the right of physically-challenged persons to access reading material, this uploading of text does not impinge any law. Even those who are print-challenged (an estimated 300 million people worldwide) and those who are unable to hold or turn the pages of a book, stand to benefit from the site.
The idea struck Rahul last September when he was invited to draft the World Blind Union's treaty for the reading disabled. “The unanimous opinion of the visually-challenged resource persons gathered there was this — the right to read is fine as a goal, but, practically, there is not much reading material available in an accessible format for them.” So, Rahul turned into a social entrepreneur, and within a year, bookbole.com was up. So far, 15,000 files have already been uploaded on the site by users around the world. Many agencies came forward to help, such as the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), which hosted a channel on Bookbole that makes it possible for Bookbole users to host their accessible content on the CIS database and share it with the community. Bookbole has now taken up the task of converting India's entire university syllabus into e-text. Plans are afoot to make the reading material available in other languages too.
But eventually, Rahul sees Bookbole as not just a free content platform, but also as a social network for visually -hallenged persons wherein they can exchange insight, share thoughts and help each other; a marketplace where publishers can also put up e-books for sale, a policy platform, and even an entertainment platform.
For instance, a service provider can even plug into the site a card game for the visually-challenged. “That would be a big hit,” Rahul says. But a huge task lies ahead and a lot of volunteer effort is needed. To pitch in to upload text, write to Rahul at founders@inclusiveplanet.com. After all, knowledge is power.
