AOF chairman William S Pinckney made this announcement in Mumbai a week ago. He signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to this effect with Dr Rajendra T Vyas, honorary secretary-general of NAB. "The state of Maharashtra is only the first we have in mind for the states in the west and south," said Mr Pinckney. "We intend starting work in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Goa subsequently." AOF handed over a cheque of Rs 5 lakh as the first installment of the Rs 10 lakh they are providing towards the production of textbooks in Marathi for up to class 10.

Dr Vyas said that children accounted for three million of the 12 million visually impaired in India, and only a fraction of visually impaired children had access to Braille textbooks. NAB has been working for the welfare of the visually impaired since 1952, and now has 18 state branches across the country. It works for the education and rehabilitation of the visually impaired, and also for the prevention and cure of blindness.

There are thousands of visually impaired children of school-going age. But only 15,000 of them are able to receive education in about 200 residential schools and institutions exclusively for the visually impaired, generally in urban areas. To extend educational facilities to visually impaired children in their own villages, NAB has instituted a programme of integrated education-education of blind children along with sighted children. Through this programme, over 4,500 visually impaired children in 1,114 schools for the sighted in 1,100 villages in 15 states are currently receiving education. The programme is also being further expanded.

Various sample surveys have been carried out to ascertain the number of visually impaired children in rural and urban areas. The National Sample Survey instituted in 1991 arrived at a figure of 4,005 million visually impaired individuals in India. The number of blind people in rural areas is 5,250 per million and in urban areas 3,020 per million. However, other studies have shown that this survey has thrown up figures far below the prevailing incidence of blindness. It is estimated that there are nine million visually impaired people in India, of which about two million happen to be children of school-going age. These figures do not include severely visually handicapped children and adults and those suffering from low vision, who are estimated to be around 28 million.

AOF and its other partner, the All India Confederation of the Blind (AICB), New Delhi, have already covered the states of Rajasthan, Delhi and Haryana, and work in Uttar Pradesh is to commence shortly. Its long-term plans include coverage of all states in a systematic and planned manner, which is to follow a cycle, returning to each state once in three-four years. AOF also supports other organisations working for the blind and some other socially relevant issues.

The Sir Jammshedji Duggan Braille Press, one of the largest printing presses in the country, is the only press in the country that produces 11 Braille journals in Marathi, Hindi and English, including a current affairs fortnightly in Hindi called Vartaman. The press also produces 26,347 Braille volumes annually on different subjects, both educational and recreational, in several Indian languages. NAB's Louis Braille Memorial Research Centre is making efforts to devise special aids and appliances for the visually impaired and is currently engaged in producing white canes suitable for Indian conditions, especially in rural areas.