On 17th September a Division Bench of Karnataka High Court consisting of acting Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Sachin Shankar Magadum directed the Karnataka Government to take steps within a period of 15 days for providing all special children (visual disabilities) braille textbooks.
The present writ petition was filed by the National Federation for the Blinds, Karnataka on behalf of the children who are specially abled. The contention of Petitioner was that in the State of Karnataka text books are not available in braille and the Government has also not uploaded the books on the website in PDF form so that a printout can be taken out braille.
In its statement the Additional Government Advocate by a memo dated March 18, 2020 stated that text books in braille and the text books to the children are being printed by the Braille Press, Mysuru and will be provided as per the indent given by Samagra Shikhana Karnataka. The Government advocate also confirmed that text books in braille from class 1 to 10 will be available from next academic year in Kannada medium.
In the light of the above the Government was directed by the Court to fulfil the statement made by it last year and a further direction for filing of compliance report was also made. The matter is to be heard on October 7th.
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