School students experienced an exciting session on Friday at Nandanam Arts College, learning to use technology to enable them to lead an independent life.

The college’s visually challenged teachers explained the importance of some of the applications. K. Raghuraman, assistant professor in English, said: “The visually impaired depend on sound. With screen reading software on the phone, I can learn by myself. I can do research, read html files or even play games.” 

Assistant professor Aranga Raja said applications such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek had made teaching easier. “The visually challenged cannot create an image or find content. In literature how do you explain the expressions on the face of a character? I can create an image using AI create a poster or even a meme,” he said.

The teachers discussed about the apps that allowed the visually challenged to scan a pdf and read it out. Students who participated were mostly from standards 6 to 9. S. Diwakar, a Tamil faculty in the college said, there are apps that took photos of a live situation and translated them into words that the visually challenged could listen

On Thursday, a visually challenged student from the government school for the blind, Poonamallee sought permission to use a computer instead of using a scribe. . The visually challenged usually struggle to find scribes. An unspoken fear that the visually challenged battle is the doubt if the scribe wrote exactly what the candidates dictated.

College Principal Dr. C. Jothivenkateswaran said, the programme Innovision 2025: An Intercollegiate Tech Expo for Persons with Visual Impairment, was organised in association with Delhi-based Saksham Trust. According to him around 150 visually challenged students from the city participated.

An exhibition of games such as ludo, snakes and ladder and a measuring device, that visually challenged persons could use attracted the students. The Government Higher Secondary School for the visually impaired, Poonamalle; Little Flower School for the visually impaired, St. Louis School for the Deaf and Blind, besides colleges including Presidency, Queen Mary’s, Quaid E-Millath and Vivekananda participated.