Chennai gets blind-friendly cyber cafe

Chennai, Aug 29: Nethrodaya, a non-government organisation (NGO), today launched a cyber cafe for visually impaired people of Chennai.

The cyber cafe at Moggapair area of the city is the first of its kind in the country to enable visually impaired people to access Internet using a special software called JAWS.

The software was provided by Bill Gates Foundation and Freedom Scientific to make Internet more accessible for visually impaired.

G. Govinda Krishnan, head of 'Nethrodaya, said that for the past couple of decades, the visually impaired had been finding it tough to operate or to use computer.

Visually impaired students had to take some external assistance to pursue their studies, but the cyber cafe has come as a great help to them.

"I am from a village where the computer facilities are not available. Here (at cyber cafe) we get all the information that we need. Most importantly, in this centre, the blind people can also access Internet, which is useful for collecting information and study materials," said Mari Selvi, a visually impaired student from Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli District.

The state government has provided land to construct the building to house the cyber cafe.

ANI>