Hi Rohit Certainly, that goes by default, smile. It is a win, win situation for one and all. It is a constant, community driven education for all the members.
Harish Harish. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dr. Rohit Trivedi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2007 6:53 PM Subject: Re: [AI] history of computer education for blind in india > Access india is also an important step if you write about the history of > computer education > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Harish Kotian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 10:57 PM > Subject: Re: [AI] history of computer education for blind in india > > >> Hello all >> >> Thanks for the interest in my story. I think I shall put in different >> parts. This is part 2. >> >> Thankfully I did recall the name of the developer of the look alike of >> Mimic synthesizer. He is Prof. M.P. Srinivasan. I would call him the >> pioneer of access technology in India. Not only did he design speech >> synthesizer, I also saw a working prototype of electronic notetaker and >> Braille printer. He was totally ready for technology transfer for these 2 >> items. Sadly, there were no takers for it. Probably, it could be still >> resorected, provided somebody takes up the manufacturing of it. We would >> have an inexpensive Braille printers which would have been immensely >> useful to blind students and other professionals. >> >> With the problems of supplies cropping up with IC's of speech >> synthesizers, he gave up working on it.He sourced New Talk, which was a >> clone of Tiny Talk. In mid 90's sound cards became an add on to the PC >> hardware, Tiny Talk, supported a large number of hardware synthesizer's >> and also supported a software synthesizer for the first time. Making it >> to >> work with software synthesizer was very tricky and I did manage to >> configure it for many blind folks. I also managed to make Mimic >> synthesizer to work with it. One could also run it in the DOS box of >> Windows. I managed to make it work this way as well. >> >> Prof. M.P. Srinivas migrated to US later on and soon thereafter the >> development of access technology ceased at I I S e. >> >> Another great soul was Prof Guha, I hope I can remember the name right. >> He >> was with IIT Delhi and had his lab at AIIMS. He too made novel >> contribution. I had seen a system with the teacher and the student >> connected by seperate terminals. The teacher both sighted and blind could >> use it. The system was designed for teaching the blind in schools. >> >> I had seen a high tech system to plot graphics in Braille sheets >> developed >> by him. >> >> I don't know what happend down the road to these systems. >> >> Networked teaching was also tried out IIT Kharagpur, I had myself not >> experienced it and can't offer any comments. >> >> In early 90's I met Prof. Patankar from BARC. He showed keen interest in >> making access technology. I interacted closely with him. He was wanting >> to >> make a terminal, with Braille keyboard, with its own wordprocessor and >> OCR >> and speech synthesizer. I saw a working prototype except the OCR >> functioning. He gave me one unit for field trials. One issue on which I >> strongly differed with him was that, I was asking him to make the >> application software of memory resident type, which would give us the >> freedom to use it with any application of our choice and not to be >> restricted to the one he offered. He kept on promising he would do it on >> a >> later date. I realised he was not going to do that and one day he did >> make his intentions clear. I parted ways with him. Later on he went on to >> recieve the President's award but sadly, none of us ever got to used the >> device. >> >> When at Bangalore, I came across the vidya vriksha project. Sriram and >> myself visited their center at Chennai. We evaluated it thoroughly and >> made known to them some small shortcommings which were making it >> difficult >> to use. Sadly, again, the feedback was not incorporated and a wonderful >> multi lingual editor did not make a good tool for us. >> >> I'll call it a day now and more in part 3. >> Warmly >> Harish. >> >> To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> with the subject unsubscribe. >> >> To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, >> please visit the list home page at >> >> http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in >> > > > To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with the subject unsubscribe. > > To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, > please visit the list home page at > http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in > To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
