The High Court of Karnataka on Thursday sought the State government’s response on a petition seeking direction to authorities to ensure that all textbooks, reference books and educational/learning materials that are made available for children in schools, be uploaded on the government’s website in the formats that are easily convertible to Braille.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Pradeep Singh Yerur passed the order on a petition filed by the National Federation of the Blind, Karnataka. The petitioners also sought a direction to the government to ensure that all children with visual disabilities in the State have access to free textbooks, reference books and other learning material in Braille, and to review all websites and online content uploaded by them and ensure that they are available in accessible format to persons with visual disabilities.
The petitioner referred to a communication, issued by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Government of India in November 2016, to all the State governments to ensure that content on websites of educational boards are uploaded in Unicode compliant fonts and available in EPUB3 format meeting EPUB accessibility guidelines.
