1.65 lakh subscriber base Bastar Junction You Tuber, Mukesh Chandrakar, 33. Sadgati. Mahua collector, small shop owner, carrom club manager turned reporter-journalist.
Braille. Tactile writing system used by visually impaired. An improvement on night writing. Written on slate and stylus, braille writer, braille note taker, embosser. Characters are formed using a combination of six raised dots, 3×2 matrix, and braille cells. 2^6 combinations – 64 possible. Letter, digit, punctuation mark, and space. Now, 8-dot braille codes have also come. Screen readers supplement. Braille displays have also become available. Braille codes are in 133 languages now.
More than 2 billion people in the world have vision impairment. There is a continuum of vision impairment. About half of them have uncorrected refractive errors. A third of them are cataract. 2% glaucoma. Extremely low vision – 250 million or no vision – 40 million. Again half of these would get vision impairment only after 40/50 years. 6 levels of vision – zero – 6/18 or better; 1 – moderate – between 6/18 – 6/60; 2 – severe – between 6/60 – 3/60; 3 – blind – between 3/60 – 1/60; 4 – blind – worse than 1/60, with slight light perception; 5 – blind – irreversible, no light perception.
Vision loss for elders can cause memory loss, cognitive impairment and decline. May also deteriorate mental health. Among working-age adults, blindness is caused by retina disorders (hereditary); diabetic retinopathy; optic atrophy; glaucoma; congenital abnormalities; cataracts; trachoma; injuries. Cataracts can cause blindness. Its prevalence doubles every 10 years after 40.
Spectacles, lenses help. Magnifying glasses, Special CC TVs, bigger prints, and fonts help. Readers, talking books, voice overs, and screen readers/magnifiers help. Other assistive technologies, talking equipment – thermometers, watches, scales, calculators, compasses, mobiles, tablets, laptops, etc.
Knowledge-skills-tools-resources are distributed in four columns: people; us; others; not yet known. PK+OK+OK+?. There are many people and we need to aggregate KSTR; same with our KSTR; same with others’ KSTR. Then, we need to aggregate (P+O+O)’s KSTR. Our effort, endeavour is to expand this, reducing the not-yet-known. With this endowed POO-KSTR, we need to go to people, take the call on how they would want to go forward, plan, implement the plan. This is participation. This is people’s rule. Democracy. At local levels. Can we facilitate this?
Can we be local, at least where we can be, where we could be? Eating our produce; eating produce of the village; eating the produce within 5-10 km radius; eating within 50-100 km radius? Most of the food. Majority of the food. Taking local milk. Drinking local water. Local air. Local garments. Local shelters, shelter materials. Local health, education, employment. Culture, traditions. Press, media. Can we increase the proportion of people doing this to a majority? In the amrt kaal. Moving away from ‘one produce/product’ to multiple diverse products, to local enterprises processing, storing, and adding value locally. And chemical free. With better climate resilience, soil health, people’s health, producers’ wellbeing. Can we get on this global movement at local levels? Person by person, plate by plate, farm by farm, village by village, area by area. Global, local.
Can we be natural, social, human, spiritual? Can we be friends with the world, trustees of nextGen?
Yes, we can. If we coexist, keep flowing. From the source. In N? sthaaniyayoga for 7L.
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