The only word I said after reading this was "WOW!" I appreciate Mr. Satyasheelan's efforts. In Tamil Nadu also, few (very few) schools are using Tamil Wikipedia. (for usual children)
Thank you Alex for sharing this story. :) *$U®¥∩* http://goo.gl/RoMyo.com <http://FirefoxSurya.blogspot.com> http://about.me/suryaceg 2011/8/22 Shiju Alex <shijualexonl...@gmail.com> > Dear Wikimedians > > I would like share an unusual story (unusual - especially for Indic > language wiki communities) that Malayalam wiki community had faced few > months back. > > In the month of February 2011, I had received an SOS call from a school > teacher (Satyasheelan) who is teaching at the Government School for the > Blind in the Kasargod > distric<http://www.webelmediatronics.in/brlads/directory_Kerala.htm>t > of Kerala. Satyasheelan was seeking Malayalam wikipedian's support to fix > few issues that he and his students faced with few Malayalam alphabets when > they read Malayalam wikipedia using a speech synthesizing software called > eSpeak <http://espeak.sourceforge.net/>. His phone call was surprise to us > since Malayalam wikimedians were not aware that visually challenged people > are using Malayalam wikipedia. (We were aware about the existence of a > software by Santhosh (named Dhawni <http://dhvani.sourceforge.net/>) to > read unicode Malayalam (and other Indic languages also) which is in its > early stages of development). So Satyasheelan's call was surprising. > > After his phone call few Malayalam wikipedians (Junaid, Thachan Makan, and > I) contacted Jonathan Duddington <http://sourceforge.net/users/jonsd>, the > primary developer (?) of eSpeak, and we worked with him to fix the issues > for Malayalam that Satyasheelan had pointed out. Jonathan fixed the issues > pretty fast and later Satyasheelan informed us that now they are able to use > Malayalam wikipedia without any issues. > > Later while we were planning for the 4th Malayalam wiki > meetup<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B0%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%BC%E0%B4%A4%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%B8%E0%B4%82%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%AE%E0%B4%82/4>(2011 > July 11) at Kannur, we decided to invite Satyasheelan to conduct a > session, since Malayalam wikimedians liked to hear the experience of > students of Blind school (using Malayalam wikipedia). But when Satyasheelan > came for the meetup we were surprised and taken aback when we learnt that > Satyasheelan is also a visually challenged person. Few of the his colleagues > (who are also visually challenged) also attended the meetup. Satyasheelan > was accompanied by his son, Nalin. > > The meetup was attended by more than 80 Malayalam wikipedians. Few photos > are available > here<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Malayalam_Wikimeetup_4_-_Kannur_11Jun2011>. > We are happy that Bishaka, Hisham, and Tory were kind enough to join us for > this meetup. There were various programs conducted as part of this meetup > (the report of the meetup is available at various locations (in Malayalam)). > Definitely the highlight of the meetup was the demonstration by > Satyasheelaman. So this mail is about that. > > Malayalam wikimedian Ajay Kuyiloor took extra efforts to record > Satyasheelan's session. We are sharing an edited version of this session > assuming that this information will help other Indic language wiki > communities. > > The video of Satyasheelan's session is available here: * > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr1T3HeBTvU* The duration of the video is > around 9 minutes. We specially thank Ajay Kuyiloor, Girish Mohan, and Jithin > who worked on this video. We admit the low quality of video since we were > not prepared for such a session. Inconvenience due to this is deeply > regretted. > > Malayalam community is welcoming your comments regarding this story so that > the discussion regarding this will benefit rest of the Indic wiki > communities also. We are actually humbled by the fact that work we do in > wikipedia is reaching out to people from all wakes of life. > > *NOTE:* Satyasheelan specially thanked Malayalam wikimedians for creating a > special navigational > template<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%AB%E0%B4%B2%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%82:%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B7%E0%B4%B0%E0%B4%AE%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B2%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%82%E0%B4%9A%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95_%28%E0%B4%B8%E0%B4%AE%E0%B4%97%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B0%E0%B4%82%29>for > reaching out easily to wikipedia articles. I still remember in 2008 when > Malayalam wikipedia user:Sadhik Khalid > <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%89%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%8B%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%8D:Sadik_Khalid>created > this template, some of us had doubted the need of such a template. Our doubt > was, why such a template is required when users can reach out to articles > easily using serach box. Now to our surprise we understood this template is > very much useful for the visually challenged people (whom we never thought > about before). > > Video of Satyasheelan's session is available here:* > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr1T3HeBTvU* > > Thanks > > Shiju Alex > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaindia-l mailing list > Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l > >
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