Bangalore: As a part of their centenary celebrations, IBM joined hands with Retina India, an organisation for persons with retinal impairment, to create a technology portal to help visually challenged students. This portal will help blind students find suitable volunteers to write their exams and to read books and other study material for them.

Mamta Sharma, IBM’s head of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for South Asia, launched a prototype of the portal last week in the city.

Amit Sharma, Chief Operating Officer, IBM India, announced a grant from IBM to Retina India.

“We are positive that a database will connect visually challenged persons across the country with their potential reader or scribe. It will be a huge help to the students who lose much time trying to find volunteers. This project is an example of how our technology support can create the change at grassroots level,” he said.

Big help
Arvind Bhartiya, Trustee of Retina India, said lack of scribes are an obstacle to visually challenged students preparing for exams.