Education Ministry lays down norms for content for disabled children

The Education Ministry has laid down new guidelines for producing digital education resources for children with disabilities, after a year in which the COVID-driven shift to online education has spotlighted the lacunae in such resources. The guidelines, released by Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on Tuesday, are based on four guiding principles, stipulating that all resources must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for disabled students. Ironically enough, while the guidelines call for the use of image descriptions wherever pictures are used in order to be accessible to visually challenged students using screen readers, this is not even followed by the guidelines document itself, according to Muralidharan, secretary, National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled. Mr. Muralidharan pointed out that even basic mandates of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2017 have not yet been implemented, four years later, including a provision that a survey of all schoolgoing children be conducted within two years to identify those with disabilities, ascertaining their special needs and the extent to which these are being met.