A a tactile campus navigation map entirely in Braille for persons with disabilities created by students of Jadavpur University.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

In a pioneering move, students of Jadavpur University have created a tactile campus navigation map entirely in Braille for persons with disabilities.

Two postgraduate students of the university’s English department, Astyartha Das and Rameshwar Chakraborty, built this tactile Braille campus map, initially ideating it as part of a class assignment.

“We both are part of the ‘Disability in Indian Literature’ optional course coordinated by Prof. Ishan Chakraborty. He would always talk about issues of access that Persons with Disabilities have to face daily,” Mr Das told The Hindu. “We wanted to do something that would be more than just paperwork inclusion, and actually contribute towards inclusivity and Access for All.”

They came up with the idea after their Professor gave the class an open call for a project assignment. “We could’ve rather submitted a term paper or created a documentary. But we instead created this map,” Mr Chakraborty said.

It took one and a half months for Mr Chakraborty and Mr Das to create the map from scratch. Comprising nearly 2,000 screws, the map is set up on a 5-foot wide and 3.5-foot tall particle board at the ground floor of the UG Arts Building, near gate 4 of Jadavpur University.

The duo added that they originally did not know Braille and that the internet had provided them with the necessary resources to learn and implement it on the map.

“We used hardcover pages that were cut in pieces. We scaled the sizes of the buildings which are bigger or smaller, for example, the administrative building i.e. Aurobindo Bhavan is bigger than the ATM,” Mr Chakraborty said. “Then we have the strings fixed which show the lanes within the campus which people can follow to go to a certain place.”

He added that they used different indicators to mark the railway track and main roads outside the Jadavpur University campus.

“On the left side of the map is a list with the full names of the buildings with short forms as indications, those short forms are stuck on the buildings,” Mr Das added.

Professor Ishan Chakraborty, a visually disabled person and professor in the university’s English Department, said he was initially sceptical of their idea but was wowed during their presentation on November 18.

“I was a student at this university for six years, and this was the first time I could visualize the campus in its entirety. It was a liberating experience,” Prof Chakraborty said. He added that even though he had a vague idea of where different landmarks were on campus, it was through the map that he could gauge how close or far they were from each other.

“This a brilliant first step towards the rights of persons with disabilities, as well as the visibility of their rights. This map will have a tangible effect on making our lives easier,” Professor Chakraborty added.