Ye Dilli Hai Meri Jaan IV

A ray of light for the blind

Meeting Prof. Vinod Sena has been one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I met him nearly three years ago when I was a journalist and was doing a feature on his initiative – Shruti Audio Book Service (SABS). He has been working endlessly since over a decade to provide audio books for the blind. Investing a considerable amount of his time and income, he is aiming to bring light to the dark world of visually impaired persons.

Print media by its very nature is inaccessible to those with serious visual impairment or for those suffering from dyslexia. SABS is a pilot project based in the Delhi University and was started in 1998 by three colleges, namely Lady Shri Ram, Hindu, and Gargi. The project intends to develop a national library service for people with visual disabilities.

Prof. Vinod Sena of Delhi University's English department deserves a major part of the credit in helping the project take off. Introduced to "audio books" by a blind student 15 years ago, he has been trying to provide a similar educational tool for the blind in our country and is now investing a considerable amount of his time and income on creating a National Library Service for the Visually Challenged.

What makes him appreciate the project more is the fact that as a child a primary vaccination to smallpox affected his own vision, making it tough for him to read the fine print. His becoming a professor goes to the credit of his parents who did all they could to help him complete his education. His sisters and parents used to read out books to him, which Prof. Sena with a sharp mind grasped well.

With the help from his fellow students and family, Prof. Sena always had a strong academic career. He was a topper in his school (DPS Mathura road) and later stood first in M.A. English from the University of Delhi in 1957. Ten years later, he got his doctorate on T.S. Eliot as a playwright from the University of Delhi and a second doctorate from the University of Cambridge on W.B. Yeats as a Literary Critic in 1970.

He was on the staff of St. Stephens College, Delhi from 1961 to 69 and joined the English department of Delhi University in 1970. He became a professor in 1983. During this period, he wrote many books, and has contributed a large number of articles to scholarly journals. His outstanding career also boasts of many awards including National Lecturer, UGC in 1986-87.

Having been a student of literature Prof. Sena knows only too well how frustrating a visual handicap can be and says that he could never read as much as he wanted to. He doesn't want this to be the fate of the millions of other people with optical problems.

His idea to help others materialised in the mid 80s with his introduction to audio books. Since then he has wanted to provide a nationwide audio book service not just to assist the education of the visually impaired but also to help them stay in touch with their reading after finishing their education.

The first step in this direction was taken in the late 90s when an Audio Book Resource Centre was commissioned at the Central Reference Library of Delhi University. Billed as the first of its kind within the country's university system, the Audio Book Service is a dream come true.

Audio books, also referred to as talking or speaking books, are recorded instead of being printed. These books reinstate oral tradition and thanks to modern technology can be replicated as many times over as needed.

A die hard optimist, Prof. Sena refused to give up despite his proposals for a pilot project being turned down. Waging a lone battle, he went about collecting material for a library. Traveling through out the country and also with the help of some of his friends abroad, he has been successful in collecting about 1000 books for his own library.

“The problem with audio books is that they are not sold in the market. The libraries in the west give such books on rent. But in India, because of high cost of production, not many books are available”, says Prof. Sena. After realizing the shortage of audio books, Prof. Sena himself started production of such audio books. But making of one such book costs around Rs. 8000-10,000 and because of lack of adequate funds; he hasn’t been able to do as much as he wanted.

Till now, Hindi, English and Political Science books have been recorded by a small batch of dedicated volunteers at a makeshift studio of Prof. Sena. With time, he plans to record books on other subjects falling within the fold of Humanities and Social Science, but only after adequately covering these three subjects.

As for science and mathematics, he says, " These subjects do not lend themselves well to the audio format". Also, long articles on various subjects including current affairs and developments in medicine have been recorded.

What makes audio books particularly useful, according to Prof. Sena, is the fact that these can be used not only by people who are completely blind but also by those with low-vision problems, those who lose their sight at a late age due to an accident and by people who suffer from learning disabilities like dyslexia. Such people seldom learn Braille and they have little or no access to reading material.

“In India we often see old people sitting in front of television as they do not have any other option for pastime. This is because their eyesight gets weak at late age and they find it hard reading a book with normal fonts sizes. In India we do not have concept of special books with large fonts for persons with weak eyesight. Even for such people, audio books may prove beneficial”, he says.

To a question on the use of audio books in the age of computers, Prof Sena's answer is that the synthesized sound of the computer is no substitute for the human voice. " It takes away the joy of a literary work whereas the human voice enhances the pleasure of reading."

While volunteers are welcome to lend their voice to books, a voice test is mandatory to ensure clarity. " It is equally important that the reader stops at the right place, otherwise the import of what is being read will be different than the printed word. Accent is no problem as long as the diction is clear," says Prof. Sena.

Project SABS envisages four components the first of which is the Shruti Information Centre or SIC. This will serve as a data bank and cover all the information regarding audio books and Braille books produced all over India. SIC is already on the Internet and is planning to develop a website soon.

The second part of the project is the recording unit. The recording of audio books is time intensive and the recording has to be of a high technical quality to enable its crisp reproduction for library use.

Thirdly SABS plans to set up Audio Book Libraries (ABL) at the Braille Library and at the four undergraduate libraries of the Delhi University which are located in different parts of the capital so as to make them easily accessible to all those in need as travel is not a simple task for the visually handicapped.

And last of all the Electronic Media Centre (EMC) is going to be set up which will speedily convert print media into electronic text.

But this is not all about Prof. Sena. In 1995, he started Yashoda Charitable Trust, which give scholarships to visually handicapped students. Currently this trust gives scholarships in 2 colleges and one school.

India is a country that has a population of more than one billion. With a conservative estimate of twelve million blind and at least as many with low vision problems, the country needs desperately to find a key to this dilemma.

Perhaps the answer lies in a project like SABS, which without questioning the importance and the relevance of Braille, aim at developing a service based totally on audio books and represents an option that has been sadly neglected in our country.

After all, no nation can deny the visually impaired their basic human right access to knowledge, information and empowerment.