Odisha Signs MoU To Strengthen Education For Blind Students

The Odisha government has signed a MoU with 'Sightsavers', a global organisation working to prevent avoidable blindness, to strengthen inclusiveeducation for the blind and low vision students, state government officials said. The Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA) on behalf of Department of School & Mass Education signed the MoU with Sightsavers yesterday, they said.    

"As part of the MoU, Sightsavers will provide technical support to OPEPA in strengthening the mainstream education of the blind and low vision children studying in general schools across the state," an official said.

Sightsavers will also provide technical support in disability management, low vision assessment, curriculum and special skill development among visually impaired students, the official said. It will also help in capacity building of resource and classroom teachers towards quality education delivery for the children with special needs, he said.    

The project while targeting approximately 25,000 visually impaired students, will also promote enabling environment at schools for approximately 1.3 lakh students with special needs, currently enrolled in general schools of the state, the official added.

As part of the initiative, Sightsavers will demonstrate the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based education, low vision devices, daisy players, tablets, accessible education materials, disabled friendly Teaching Learning Materials (TLM) for better learning outcome of the targeted students, he said.