हिंदी
The pandemic has changed the scenario of education as everything has become digital. We do not know when this would come to an end and that’s why we should adapt to this new mode of online learning. The schools and colleges are shut in India since March to contain the spread of the virus. This has specially posed a major problem for disabled students who are unable to cope with the new online trend. Though, they are few in number, they should not be neglected.
Swabhiman, a community-based organisation, and Disability Legislation Unit of Eastern India of National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP), India’s leading cross-disability rights organisation has published some reports regarding this matter. Dr Sruti Mohapatra of Swabhiman has revealed that a major problem in India is that vast number of students belong to the government schools and are mostly poor. They do not have a cell phone and cannot afford Internet access.
The report further revealed that the disabled children are being neglected by the teachers. The teachers have not been trained how to help these students study online.
When students were asked about the situation they revealed that they had difficulty understanding things online and lagged behind. The teachers did not pay individual attention to them and several of their concepts are still unclear. This is why plenty of disabled students have been avoiding online classes. Another reason is that some students have only one cell phone which belongs to their father. Once their father leave for work they do not have any access to the cell phone. And they can not afford a second cell phone due to lack of resources. The disabled students are afraid they would lag behind in their studies if no measures are taken to help them out by the government.
