The Concept

The Braille Library system for use by visually challenged persons, and having  a number of novel features has been designed, made  and launched by city based companies  Modular Infotech Private Limited and  Automatic Control Equipments.

The objectives of the project are - To set up reading libraries for the visually challenged students with a view to help provide them access to maximum reading material both for academic as well as other literary reading,  ensuring that the libraries are located in such a way that maximum students are benefited by the same. The Libraries use the technology of Microcomputer based Electronic Braille Readers with software for reading  Indian Languages and English Braille. This technology has  been developed by Modular Infotech  and manufactured by  ACE both Pune companies, incorporating very  user-friendly features for the visually handicapped  users, and an efficient storage system for Braille Books which saves upto 98 % space, and gives a virtually unlimited life for the books

Mr Raghunandan Joshi, the Joint Managing Director  of  Modular Infotech Private Limited,  said that the  salient features of the Braille Library System developed by Modular Infotech and ACE are that books in all Indian languages and English can be converted to Braille from their soft copies. After the conversion to Braille, these books are indexed and are stored in pen-drive storage devices in a compact manner. A normal 2 GB pen-drive can store upto 2000 or more books. A Library administration specially designed for the Braille Library,  allows the pen-drives to be loaded with the books and their index lists. From these,   required books can be stored for reading into the BRAILLE-MITRA Reader. Thus each Reader can work independently without the need of a PC.  

He further said that the key-unit of the Braille Library - BRAILLE MITRA is a Refreshable Braille Reader for visually handicapped and sightless people for  reading in English and all 11 Indian Languages in Braille. It  uses a new technology to have 'soft Braille books' which consists of Braille characters formed in a row, with each character having six dots made by smooth plastic pins,  which are raised selectively, by electro-mechanical means  to make a line of Braille characters. The 'feel' of this line, to the sightless person's index fingers is exactly same as that of 'feeling' an embossed Braille line in a Braille book. This Braille  line, is driven by a micro-computer, which provides many additional features to the reader. BRAILLE-MITRA  has the great advantage that after the person 'reads' a line, the next line appears  automatically on the same place, and the person can easily read the display word-by-word and line-by-line. BRAILLE-MITRA can keep showing any number of books 'loaded' in its micro-computer's memory.  The sightless person can virtually get an unlimited number of books for Braille reading on BRAILLE-MITRA, provided of course these books are available in Braille in  soft form, as a computer file. BRAILLE-MITRA  is silent, and has a variety of navigation features for the reader to make Braille reading a truly wonderful experience.

Dr  Mehernosh Cooper - Chairman of Modular Infotech said that this project will be a path-making model project for the benefit of visually handicapped, and can be replicated in each district of  India. He further said that a lot needs to be done in the area of education for the blind in India - estimated to be 13 million, of which only a small percentage get education, and that too in their local languages, where establishing Indian languages Braille libraries will be of great help to the students.

Mrs Meena Joshi, Technical Director - Modular Infotech said that content creation for the Braille Libraries will be the focal activity after the libraries are created,  and  appealed that All publishers of Indian languages books, and Balbharati,  have now an opportunity to make their books available to the blind, in a big way, and help open the gates of knowledge to them and make a significant contribution. This will rapidly increase the literacy rate of blind persons and make different books useful for secondary, higher and professional education easily available to them. This will be a great service to the society.

Ahmedabad May 27, 2008, Pune based Modular InfoTech Pvt. Ltd. today announced the release of latest version (version 7.1) of their flagship product, Shree-Lipi Gurjari specially designed for Gujarati Language.  Shree-Lipi Gurjari  is the most popular Indian language package in Gujarat for the DTP sector, newspapers, corporate offices, Government of Gujarat, and for use in e-Governance, according to the company.

This package is used to enable all the Windows based applications to create documents and data in Gujarati and other Indian languages. In addition to this, the package also offers a number of utilities to help create documents in Gujarati and other Indian languages.

Dr. M.N. Cooper, Chairman and Joint. Managing Director said that the  Shree-Lipi Gurjari 7.1 is a "font rich , feature rich" software package and contains a large number of beautiful Gujarati fonts.

 R.R.Joshi, Joint Managing Director said that it also has spell-checkers for 9 languages (Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, and Malayalam), plug-ins for Page-Maker, MS-Word, Excel, Adobe Indesign, Corel Draw, support for Unicode fonts and much more. In addition to fonts in Shree-Lipi format, it also gives fonts in other standard font layouts like Tamil99, KGP/Nudi, Bangla Akademi etc.

The package allows conversion of data to and from many font formats that are available in the market. The addition of official language dictionaries for Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Oriya and Kannada will allow user to find out official terms in the languages easily. The text styler, Roopa, a unique feature in Shree-Lipi can be used for having 3-D effects also. 

President of India inaugurates Shree-Lipi-Braille and Braille “Agnipankh”

Pune, Jan 29: President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, recently inaugurated the Shree-Lipi-Braille Translation Software for 12 Indian Languages to Braille, and the first Braille copy of the President's autobiography in Marathi - “Agnipankh”. Shree-Lipi-Braille is the multilingual super fast Translation software for creation of Indian Language Braille books, developed by Modular InfoTech Private Limited, the well known Pune based multilingual software packages Development Company which is working in the field of Indian Languages software for the last 24 years Modular Infotech has translated the Marathi book authored by the President, into Braille in a very short time using Shree-Lipi-Braille. The first copy of Shree-Lipi-Braille Software and the Braille Agnipankh were presented to The President after the publication at his hands. Chairman and Joint Managing Director of Modular Infotech Dr Mehernosh Cooper said - “There are over 1 crore blind persons in India. Very few of them know and study in English. There is a tremendous shortage of educational material for the Blind, and of Braille books in the 12 Indian Languages. The main reasons for this (amongst others) are the time and cost of Braille books production. A Marathi book requires about 5 times the pages after translation to Braille. Data entry, proof reading and correction for Braille is a very time consuming and tedious process. These difficulties will now get resolved, with the use of Shree-Lipi-Braille Software. The President's autobiography in Marathi – Agnipankh, a book of about 175 pages took about 20 minutes to Translate to Braille using Shree-Lipi Braille Software. Without this software, the book would have required about 50 days for Translation and production. Educational textbooks in Braille for 10th and 12th standard, college books, and also the other technical and literary books can now be easily translated into Braille. This will benefit the blind persons in a big way.” Dr. Cooper further said - “The Government's institutions like Balbharati and private publishers may take a note of this development.” Mr. Raghunandan Joshi, Joint Managing Director of the Company said - “The President, took a keen interest in the Translation Software Shree-Lipi Braille. He said that he would get installed, the first software package presented to him . The President saw with interest the Braille Agnipankh volumes presented to him, and took information about the same. The President praised the work done by Modular Infotech, and said 'May God Bless you for doing this work'. Modular Infotech submitted to the President, a memorandum regarding what the Government can do for increasing the availability of Braille books to the blind persons. The President read the memorandum and assured us to give the possible help for this cause.” Mr Joshi further said that Modular Infotech is greatly encouraged by this positive response from the President, and has re-dedicated itself to carry this work further with renewed vigor. Mrs Meena Joshi, Technical Director of the Company explained that the inspiration for developing the Shree-Lipi-Braille Software was received by the Company during discussions with a blind director at the School for Blind Girls at Alandi, about two years ago. She further said - “It took about 2 years to develop the Shree-Lipi-Braille Software for the 12 Indian Languages, with lot of efforts by the Company and with the help of a number blind persons and other social workers dedicated to this cause. Shree-Lipi-Braille has many useful features. The Software can not only translate to Braille from a soft-copy of any book in Shree-Lipi format, but also can translate from a soft-copy of a book keyed in other formats of other DTP softwares as well. With this, almost any book in any Indian Language, available as a soft-copy can now be translated to Braille in a very short time. After translation, the book can be printed on different Braille Embossers, or screen-printed, or printed by metal type. Apart from translation, Shree-Lipi-Braille also allows six-key-typing which is the standard way of direct data entry in Braille. The Software also allows typing conventionally in Indian languages, and then translating the proof-corrected text into Braille, and take output in Braille. All publishers of Indian languages books have now an opportunity to make their books available to the Blind, and help open the gates of knowledge to them and make a significant contribution. This will rapidly increase the literacy rate of blind persons and make different books useful for secondary, higher and professional education easily available to them.” She added Mr. Vasant Bhat, who is handling the marketing of Shree-Lipi-Braille said that a unit with a low-cost computer, Shree-Lipi-Braille Software and thermography screen-printing (or metal type printing) facility can give self-employment opportunity in rural areas for blind and dumb-deaf persons. Such a unit can provide conventional and Braille DTP service. At the end of this press conference, a blind girl read out  a chapter from the Braille  Agnipankh autobiography of The President and earned praise from all. For Further Details please contact R.R. Joshi, Joint Managing Director Modular Infotech On 020- 24226612, 24227994, 9370131502