In a first, visually-impaired man reads news on AIR Pune Monday January 04,2016

 

It was a routine broadcast schedule for the listeners of All India Radio (AIR) on Monday morning Jan 04,2016, when presenter Manoj Kshirsagar started the regional news bulletin at 7.10 am in his distinctive voice.
However, halfway into the bulletin, Kshirsagar said that he would now pass on the microphone to Dhanraj Patil, a representative of Pune Blind Men’s Association, who will complete the bulletin by reading the news in braille.

Patil’s presentation surprised not only Kshirsagar, but all the staff at the AIR and the listeners. “It takes people months to catch the right speed and tone; but he did it with precision,” said Kshirsagar, who has been on the job for several years.

It was a first for AIR Pune that a visually-impaired person presented the news bulletin. The programme was orchestrated as a tribute to French educationist Louis Braille on his 207th birth anniversary.

About Louis Braille (January 04,1809 – January 06, 1852)

 

Louis Braille(January 04,1809 – January 06, 1852)was a French educator and inventor of a system of reading and writing for use by the  Blind or Visually Impaired  which remains known worldwide simply as  Braille

Blinded in both eyes as a result of an early childhood accident, Braille mastered his disability while still a boy. He excelled in his education and received scholarship to France's Royal Institute for Blind Youth 

 

While still a student there, he began developing a system of tactile code that could allow blind people to read and write quickly and efficiently. Inspired by the military cryptography of Charles Barbier,Louis Braille constructed a new method built specifically for the needs of the blind and presented his work to his peers for the first time in 1824.

In adulthood,Louis Braille served as a professor at the Institute and enjoyed an avocation as a musician, but he largely spent the remainder of his life refining and extending his system