Aikya : A Special School for Special Children Nirmala Chakravarthy
“My first child was quite normal,” begins Parvati, tracing the beginning of the school for children with Down's Syndrome “But when my son Prabhu was born, I knew that everything was not alright with the baby. So I was all the time looking out for special schools for him. When he was four years old, we came to Madras from Delhi and I did a Diploma in Special Education. After helping my professor to set up a unit for special children for three years, I started my own school.” Thus was born ‘Aikya'. Today, Aikya offers special education to children in the age group of 3 to 18. At Aikya each child is assessed by the Madras Development Scale. Depending on the child's potential, goals are set along with a deadline, in every single area of development, such as self-help, motor areas, toilet training, reading, writing, numbers, etc. An important factor is the counselling of the parents to motivate the child. It is Aikya's firm conviction that even a severely retarded child has some skills which we need to exploit. The essence of Aikya's spirit – make the effort and the hidden abilities will definitely surface....more

Technology combats disabilities - A report from USA
Helping to overcome difficulties is one of the greatest advances in technology that now allows computers to supply information for impaired senses and for controlling limbs and other bodily functions. As a result, people who are deafblind or are confined to a wheelchair are integrating into society as never before. Technology is increasing their independence and opening up job opportunities. The boost to self-reliance has resulted in two trends. One is the eagerness with which the people have accepted the Information Age; the second trend is the development of more powerful tools for people who are disabled. In the last few decades, engineers, with disabled people in mind have been designing products ranging from robotic devices to virtual reality interfaces. Examples include an apparatus that helps those suffering from strokes to lift objects, large vocabularies of accessible synthetic voice that aid people with speech impediments and more capable wheelchairs. Computers will have voice outputs.
Centres like Future Home Institute demonstrate how current technology can make houses more accommodating to inhabitants, no matter what their functional limitation is....more

Javed Abidi
Meet Javed Abidi, Programme Officer in charge of Disabilities, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, key member of the Disabled Rights Group and one of the main forces behind the recent Disability Legislation which came into force at the beginning of this year.
Javed Abidi. So named after the 20 days that the doctors gave him. For “Javed” in Arabic means “one who is immortal”. A condition called Spina Bifeda or pressure of the spine on the nerves was diagnosed which caused damage to the “back” of his legs. After a surgery, Javed could walk with crutches till the age of 15. But this too gave way to a wheelchair. Despite the trauma, Javed recalls an extremely happy childhood. Over and above the positive spirit was the strong parental and family support.
If school life was happy and marked by activity, college was even more hectic, filled with a large dose of extra curricular activities in drama and debates. After graduating from Aligarh Muslim University in English Literature, he went to Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio to study Mass Communication where he graduated with distinction.
Javed returned to India in 1989. He was determined to “do something for the disabled”. After the initial set back, Javed landed up with 200 assignments with the city magazines, during the run up to the 1989 elections. Under his guidance, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation's Disabled Persons' Welfare Cell has taken a decisive shape. Set up as a joint venture with the RGF and Actionaid, the Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled Persons focuses specifically on promoting vocational rehabilitation among people with disability. Abidi has played a definitive role in strengthening disability advocacy in the country. ...more

A tandem adventure - wheelchair style - Susan Sygall and Tom Broeker
Biking from Amsterdam to Paris sounds exotic, exciting, wild and adventurous, doesn't it? It's even more exciting when your main mode of transportation is a wheelchair. With the help of a local bike shop, my partner Tom adapted a tandem that would pull my wheelchair. As bikes go, it was an extraordinarily long vehicle, and people everywhere became fascinated by two Oregonians travelling with a wheelchair across Holland and France. It was cold and windy, but we had begun our journey. Bicycling is a way of travel that lets you experience a country, its everyday smells, sights, and people, in a way you would miss by any other mode of travel. ...more