Visually impaired college students struggle to find scribes to help them write their exams. A fortnight ago a message was doing the rounds in social media appealing for scribes. The appeal had come from a city college which has nearly 100 blind students in the undergraduate programme.
“For the past two years there were no exams. We were able to get research scholars to pitch in. Usually M Phil students would offer but now that the course has been withdrawn we don’t have that resource,” said V. Sivaraman, associate professor, Department of English, Presidency College.
The institution has 94 visually impaired students in four undergraduate departments, including Tamil, English, Political Science and History. There is also a student with cerebral palsy and another orthopaedically disadvantaged person who require a scribe. Every semester, arranging for scribes is a difficult task. The pandemic has exacerbated the issue, Mr. Saravanan explained. “Except for around 15-20 students the rest require scribes who can write in Tamil whereas 90% of the scribes are comfortable in writing in English,” he said.
