Wednesday, July 13 2005 17:11 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: Touched by the yearning of a blind person to follow his speeches on his website, President A P J Abdul Kalam took the initiative to develop a low cost software that enabled the visually challenged to learn from the web.

The President, describing his experiences on special learning facility for the blind, said today (July 13, 2005) that a person, Deependra Manocha, had written to him a few months ago about his inability to read the speeches on the website.

''Later I met Asif Iqbal, who told he was using a computer with expensive third party software for his studies, exams, presentations and communications,'' Kalam said.

''This motivated me to think of getting software developed, which can become a versatile, low cost tool for all trainers and self help learning system for visually challenged persons through the web,'' Kalam told the third convocation of the Netaji Subhas Open University (NSOU) here.

''Based on this thought, a 'Speech Applet Virtual Vision' has been designed at Rashtrapati Bhavan,'' the President said.

The main objectives were that it should be a versatile tool, have voice-enabled interface, configurable with any web server, provide audio output of any web content on mouse over and mouse click.

''It should also be available to access through web and easy to deploy the course designed for visually challenged persons in an intranet and internet environment, Kalam said adding ''a team has developed and produced the tool having these characteristics within a period of seven weeks.''

Since the IT tool enabled interaction, Kalam said the NSOU might study and incorporate it for visually impaired students.