Delhi’s Kirori Mal College launches disability research centre : Education News

Delhi University’s Kirori Mal College on Thursday launched a disability research centre to provide a platform for academic engagement with disability as a subject.

The college also held a ceremony to mark the launch and distributed assistive devices such as laptops, electronic (refreshable) braille display, daisy players (digital recorders) and tablets to around 30 visually impaired students at the college.

Someshwar Sati, coordinator at the Centre for Disability Research and Training, said the centre was set up this semester “with the intention to enable the students and the faculty alike to promote Disability as a legitimate field of academic inquiry and work towards a creation of an inclusive society.”

Principal Vibha Chauhan said the college had been trying to strengthen the culture of enablement. “The centre will focus on research and training and a tool to understand and conceptualise the idea of disability and how it has evolved and its relationship with society. The centre is not limited to the college’s UG students and will be open to all,” she said.

“The Centre provides them with a unique opportunity to deepen their understanding of disability and partake in the process of spreading social awareness of the phenomena in the hope of effecting an attitudinal change in society,” he said.

The college has also collaborated with non-governmental organization (NGO) Saksham on another initiative called Aarohan. The initiative will work on creating a level-playing field for students with Blindness and Low Vision by providing reasonable accommodation based on their need-assessment.

The announcements were made during the felicitation ceremony for alumnus Yogesh Kathuniya who won a silver medal in the recently concluded Tokyo Paralympics.