Bringing Accessible Textbooks to Visually Impaired Students in India

A  new documentary film meets Nidhi, a 15-year old student living in northeastern India. Nearly a decade ago, an accident caused the blindness that could have ended her education.  With the help of the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC), Nidhi and thousands of other Indians are benefiting from increased access to textbooks specially adapted to their needs.

Through the generous funding provided by the Republic of Korea, ABC was able to implement capacity building activities in India. Training and technical assistance was provided for the production of educational materials in Hindi and English in accessible formats. ABC’s implementing partner in India was able to produce 180 accessible textbooks for grades 9 - 12 in the provinces of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.  These newly produced audio textbooks will benefit an estimated 5000 - 7000 high school students who are visually impaired.

Reading devices were also provided, allowing Nidhi to study independently without having to ask someone to read to her.

And that is just one aspect of the worldwide work undertaken by the ABC, a multi-stakeholder partnership supporting the goals of the Marrakesh Treaty, by increasing the number of books around the globe in accessible formats such as braille, audio and large print.