Bengaluru: India is home to world’s largest visually impaired population with over 50 lakh people, according to the 2011 census and 2,50,000 blind persons in Karnataka. Most of the visually impaired people belong to the underprivileged sections of society. Blindness combined with poverty limits their access to education, employment, health services, which finally leads to their socio-economic exclusion.
India also tops the chart for the largest population of the corneal blind in the world. So many people come forward to work for the visually impaired and the National Federation of the Blind, Karnataka (NFB) is one among them which was started in 2004. There has been a surge in NFB’s efforts to empower and reach out to more visually challenged individuals year after year. The NFB came into being on July 10, 2004 with a view to realising the vision of the founders of reaching out to serve every visually impaired person in the state with a philosophy “Let the Blind Lead the Blind’’.
During the last 12 years, the federation has developed a strong presence across Karnataka, by providing a range of services to the blind in every nook and corner of the state through a network of its offices and regional units at Mysuru and Hubballi.
Says Gautam Agarwal, founder and general secretary, NFB, “This is a membership-based federation and presently we have more than 1000 members. The organization’s vision works for advocacy because the government has many programmes for the blind which for some reasons get delayed. So we work to implement it soon to help blind people. In education, we try to facilitate and work to provide all the infrastructure to blind students. The NFB ensures decent and dignified living for all blind people."
The federation undertakes initiatives of both legal and civil advocacy in order to influence the government for improvement and modernisation of public policies and practices, governing the rehabilitation, education, employment, social security and other concerns of persons with disability in general and blind in particular.
NFB Karnataka also operates a store of varied range of assertive devices which are used by the blind in their day-to-day lives. The store procures all such assertive devices from reputed manufacturers and dealers across the country and abroad, and makes them available to the visually challenged individuals and their institutions to the states at its actual cost. The assertive devices available at the store include Braille learning and writing devices, mobility aids, educational aids, indoor and outdoor games, puzzles and personnel devices.
“If someone wishes to join the NFB Karnataka with the view to serving persons with visual impairment, the membership of the federation is open to all such individuals and institutions. Our prime focus is on issues related to persons with blindness and low vision such as prevention of blindness and rehabilitation, education, employment and social inclusion of persons with visual impairment” Gautam Agarwal added.
NFB has many programmes and job alert is one among them. Under these services, NFB have thousands of job seekers in Karnataka and many other parts of the country to whom they circulate text messages (SMS) containing information about new job openings in government of India, as well as their states concerned with description of reservation status, mode of application, last date, minimum qualification, etc., so that interested job seekers with visual disability can avail the opportunity as per their convenience so that no job opportunity meant for them could go unnoticed.
The NFB also persuades the state government to implement effectively Persons with Disability Act 1995, UN convention of the rights of persons with disability and directions of the judiciary regarding socio-economic empowerment of persons with disability.
