Lucknow: Sarah Moin, 17, draws letters using her finger on her mother’s arms. It takes a while before her mother, Julie Hamid, speaks for her: “I am happy. Very happy today.” A student of Christ Church college in Lucknow, Sarah suffers from a rare condition called sarcoidosis which has affected her vision, hearing and speech. But Sarah – known to her friends and teachers as Hellen Keller for her high intelligence levels – hasn't lost her ability to amaze people. She scored 95% in her ICSE class X exams, the results of which were declared on Monday. “She appeared in the board examination using an ‘orbit reader’, was given around an hour extra by the board considering her disability and was given an exemption from diagrammatic questions. We were expecting good marks but not over 90%,” said Julie, a govt school teacher. An orbit reader is a unique 3-in-1 device that serves as a self-contained book reader, a note-taker and as a braille display by connecting to a computer or smartphone. Sarah’s dad Moin Ahmad Idrisi took voluntary retirement from his govt job to help his daughter pursue her dream. “She was blind since birth but could hear a bit. After class 3rd, she lost her hearing power too. Her previous school was not ready to let her continue with schooling; hence, we took her for treatment to a few doctors in South India, but nothing worked. She lost a couple of years,” Idrisi said. “But we kept teaching her using braille at home. Eventually, we met principal Rakesh Chattree of Christ Church College who gave her admission to a special class where a wonderful teacher, Salman Ali Qazi, was taking care of some such special students in a separate classroom. But our daughter was the only one with multiple disabilities,” he said. He said that the orbit reader turned out to be a boon for her. It is a device with a braille keyboard that is attached to a laptop. It has an ebook reader that pops on the keyboard to enable a person to memorize things through the touch and feel the process. Sarah communicates with everyone in the family by drawing words on others’ hands using her fingers. “This journey was not easy. All the content in the book was scanned and converted into a Word file, so that it could be connected to the orbit reader and she could read it by placing her fingers on the braille keyboard of her laptop. For revisions, I used to ask her questions by making alphabets with a finger, which she quickly joined together to form a word and gradually into a sentence to understand what question I am asking,” said her mother. “Luckily, we both are from the science stream and our daughter has a keen interest in science. Her marks reflect the same as she scored 99 in geography, chemistry (97), biology (92) and physics (89),” she said. Sarah, who dreams of pursuing a career in science, has already begun self-study for her class 11. Like both parents, Sarah’s elder brother Zohaib Ahmad, who is studying law at Lucknow University, also helps her in academics.
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