When images turns into accessible to everybody

“Take 10-15 pictures of the same subject. The tree or the lake will not move; [you must] move yourself,” Partho Bhowmick, founding father of Blind with Camera, instructed a bunch of 40 visually impaired people on the immersive images workshop, “The Art of Seeing Differently”, carried out by The Accessibility Research Centre (ARC), IIT Madras, on Friday. 

The workshop was all about how images isn’t just the creation of a visible product. “It is a form of self-expression where persons who are visually impaired can take pictures using non-visual senses and cognitive skills,” he provides.

The bushes rising out of the lake was the topic that Uday Kethan Dharanikota, a PhD Scholar from The English and Foreign Languages University, was photographing on the workshop. “With the help of some AI-powered apps that guide us about the scene in front of us, we too, can ace this art of taking a photo,” he says. His grades have been as soon as affected when he was unable to take a photography-related course throughout his undergraduate programme. “There were not many avenues some years ago, but now, technology is such a boon for persons with disabilities,” he provides. 

Another PhD scholar from University of Hyderabad, Thejaswini, first went in for the tactile expertise of the tree trunk, earlier than clicking footage of it on the workshop. She says she stopped taking images after shedding her imaginative and prescient 4 years in the past. 

Head of ARC, Hemachandran Karah, shared how the world often solely talks about what you can not do, including that Evgen Bavcar, who misplaced his sight, went on to turn into a famend photographer within the Seventies. “Photography for the visually impaired is indeed about democratising access and also about the joy of feeling included,” he provides.

J. Karthika, postdoctoral researcher, ARC, says the explanation for conducting such workshops is that many assume that images is a visible medium and isn’t for many who are visually impaired, which isn’t the case. She provides how additionally they need the visually impaired people to make use of these expertise of their domains.

Walking from one spot to a different throughout the IIT-Madras campus for the workshop venues, what all of the sudden stopped the budding photographers have been the blackbucks and noticed deer. “We too get excited when we hear a deer is passing by. I will go show my family and friends that I saw these with the photographs I took,” says English literature pupil Nivedha. “I may not able to see what I clicked, but I can make memories and have a digital diary, too,” she provides.

The occasion is being organised in collaboration with the Chennai Institute of Journalism, Inclusive Education-IIT Madras, The Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj Centre for Advanced Research on Spirituality, Science, and Society, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, SRM Department of Media studies-SRMIST, Karna Vidya Foundation, Meiporul Chennai Foundation Trust, and Alliance Française of Madras.

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