The revised guidelines are a ray of hope, they say, for thousands of visually impaired students who lose out on job opportunities due to lack of support infrastructure at examination time.
The new guidelines will make appearing for exams easier for the visually impaired and are based on a joint meeting held earlier between the commissioner for persons with disability, heads of educational boards and the Mumbaibased National Association for the Blind.
“As decided in the meeting, we have written the letter to all examination-conducting bodies,” said Dr Mohan Kumar, chief commissioner for persons with disability.
The new guidelines deal with the selection procedure of the scribe, reader or laboratory assistant, seating arrangements and visual reasoning for the blind. According to the new guidelines, any person having a visual diability of 40 per cent and above should be permitted a scribe. Also, soon, visually impaired candidates will be able to select their scribe or reader.
“Not even one per cent of the quota for blind persons is filled in the country’s public as well as private sector jobs. This is directly linked to the irregularities in the examination pattern in school, college or entrance exams for jobs in banking and other sectors,” said K Ramkrishna, director of the National Association for the Blind. “Every year, there are about 2,000 blind students appearing for SSC and HSC respectively, but poor infrastructure leaves them far behind others. It had become imperative to bring to light this issue as bright students are unable to pass because of these barriers.”
So, the revised guidelines include creation of district-, division- and state-level panels to oversee the implementation of better facilities for visually impaired students. Candidates will also be allowed to check the computer and meet the scribe a day before the examination.
Besides, existing criteria for the scribe – including a lower educational qualification than the candidate, his age, etc – are set to go.
The new guidelines will also give visually impaired candidates the option of choosing the mode of examination – in Braille, on a computer or in large print. The guidelines also suggest seating arrangements on the ground floor, to be made before the commencement of the examination.
For entrance exams for banking jobs and other similar sectors, the letter has also suggested that questions related to visual reasoning be replaced by alternative objective questions.
“It is practically impossible for us to instruct various companies or banks who conduct entrance exams,” said Dr Kumar. “Hence, we have issued a letter to the Ministry of Finance, which we hope will take the matter seriously.”