How Braille calendars are a lesson in accessibility for the visually challenged 

In the basement of the Kerala Federation of the Blind (KFB)‘s office near Law College Junction in Thiruvananthapuram, two large printing press, manufactured in Europe, take up most of the room. A roll of paper weighing nearly 200 kilograms with a thickness of 140 grams per square meter (GSM) is fed into the white press, with metal bars placed in front of it to hold the sheets in place. After the command to print is given from a connected desktop computer, the sheet of paper slides into the machine with a whirring noise. Within a few seconds, sheets of white paper emerge from the other end of the press, with no ink, but embossed with dots of various permutations and combinations, arranged in a grid with 42 characters in each of the 27 lines on a page.

This is how KFB produces its Malayalam Braille calendars using its state-of-the-art press. The calendars are available free of cost to the visually challenged across Kerala, in a move to improve accessibility for the community in the State since last year.

“Calendars are essential to everyone. Even if you have calendars on your phone, you still hang them on the wall or keep them on your table,” says Habeeb C, president of KFB.

Louis Braille

Braille is a universally accepted writing system for the visually impaired that uses raised dots to represent letters, numbers and other symbols. The dots are arranged in a specific pattern of six cells invented by Louis Braille in France in 1824. His birthday on January 4 is celebrated as World Braille Day since 2019 by the United Nations General Assembly

 “Braille is just a skill for the visually challenged like writing and reading for others. Essentially, we should make use of its possibilities and that’s why we chose something as basic as a calendar,” says Habeeb, also a professor at Farook College, Kozhikode.

Founded on September 11, 1967, the KFB, which currently has 3,980 members, has championed their cause through a range of steps from training programmes to legal negotiations for policy changes. Claiming to be one of the biggest service delivery organisations of the visually impaired in Asia, the Federation has been responsible for printing Braille textbooks used across 12 schools for visually impaired children in Kerala since the 1980s, says Habeeb.

The two machines in Thiruvananthapuram were purchased with the help of the National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Visual Disabilities and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India. They have another press in Kannur. During the 2024 general elections, the press embossed 1,02,963 ballot papers for the visually impaired in the State.

Inside of the Braille press at the KFB office
| Photo Credit:
Nainu Oommen

In 2023, Abdul Hakeem, general secretary of KFB, presented the idea for the Braille calendar. Last year, around 700 people acquired the calendar from the Federation, which include visually challenged people and schools. 

A step forward

Abdul Hakeem, visually challenged from birth, says a lot has changed in terms of available resources for the community. “When I was studying in school, we didn’t have textbooks in Kerala. They used to be printed in Chennai. For Malayalam, English and Hindi, we used to make notes using a Braille instrument. Earlier, we used to make audio books spending our own money.“

Habeeb says, “With assistive technology, we have been given possibilities to establish an autonomy for which we have been fighting for a long time. Screen reader and optical character recognising software, help us read, write and even browse social media.” He adds, “As part of the Accessibility India campaign, some businesses even have their menus in Braille.”

However, Krishnan M, vice president of the Federation, points out how there is still a lack of accessibility from the shape of a coin to bus stands with a dearth of tactile and auditory aids. “More than Braille script, there is something called structural accessibility,” referring to the need for public spaces with designs usable by people with various disabilities. 

“When we define disability, we see it as a limitation. However, difficulties do not arise from disabilities; instead it is because of how the society is structured for the ‘able-bodied’,” adds Habeeb.

The calendars can be acquired for free by writing to KFB at kfbtvm@gmail.com with phone number, Unique Disability ID number and residential address.