THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was not long ago that music was synonymous with audio cassettes that could be played on tape recorder.Technology has taken us forward to the world of CDs, DVDs, and i-pods, but all for the clear-sighted world.But for the visually challenged, whose auditory skills compensate for their loss of sight, technology seems to have taken a step backward. What has hit them the most is the disappearance of that discreet box that played as well as recorded voices at the single press of a button - the good old tape recorder.Surely CDs, i-pods and small voice recorders are nice, but none of them serve the purpose of recording as efficiently as the tape recorder. “As it is, there is a dearth of braille textbooks. Earlier, whenever students got hold of any of these books, they would read it out and record it in the tapes. Or else, friends would read out from a normal textbook and we would record it. But with CDs, recording has become impossible,” says Jancy from Thodupuzha, who is doing her second year BA in music.Recording on CDs is possible if you have an armoury of recording software, studio microphone that could be plugged into the USB port of the hard drive, noise-reduction tools, sound-mixers and so on, which are way beyond the means of most of the visually challenged students.“But, none of us have CD players as they are very expensive and we cannot afford it. So the educational CDs distributed to us by different agencies lie unused,” says Rethimol from Alappuzha who is doing her second year of post-graduation in Malayalam.A majority of visually challenged students come from low economic background and buying CD players does not seem to be an attractive option. Precisely why Vidya from Kottarakkara hangs on dearly to her precious tape recorder even years after she got it.“This helped me immensely through my Bachelors and Masters course, and now the BEd course as well. I don’t think I would have got this far without this device,” she says.Tape recorder and cassettes not only help these students during exam time, but also with their assignments which require them to refer a number of textbooks.
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