Plea In Delhi HC Seeks Steps For Visually, Auditorily Impaired Students To Cope With Online Learning

Source: The HIndustan Times

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought the Centre’s response on a plea seeking mechanism for students with visual or auditory impairment to help them cope with online classes being conducted by educational institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic

A bench of justices conducting the hearing through video conferencing, issued a notice to the Ministry of Human Resource Development and Social Justice and Empowerment to asking them to file a counter affidavit.

The court listed the matter for further hearing on June 2.

The plea was made by two law students, Prateek Sharma and Dikshya Singh who said that due to the global pandemic education has taken a digital shift but no efforts has been made by the authorities to consider the needs of visually and auditory impaired students. Due to this ignorance the impaired students are left to fend for themselves and this has also caused discrimination has irreparable  educational endeavours of the students, the plea mentioned.

The plea sought direction to the Centre to “direct that educational material be made available in such format that can be accessed and re-accessed by specially-abled students and further that all educational institutions be directed to upload or make or make available educational instructions which is uploaded on the internet or website or any other such instrument to carry same educational instructions in sign language readily available and free of cost”.