Constituency Served

persons with disability, parents, teachers

Details of Work

The Department provides rehabilitation services through several programmes. It is responsible for eight government schools for the hearing and visually impaired, 30 special schools, and 90 special schools for children with mental retardation, hearing and visual impairment, and physical disability. It offers scholarships to children with disability from Std 1 up to post-graduation. It has a Braille press at Mysore that supplies books for visually impaired children, a sound library that has textbooks for the pre-university and degree courses, and a computer training centre. The Department also supplies aids to persons with disability, has a centre at Mysore for diagnosis and rehabilitation, and a pilot early intervention programme for infants at high risk in conjunction with an NGO. Its social security schemes provide financial assistance to the disabled, to institutions which care for the destitute disabled, and which insure the life of care givers of the disabled. The Department provides information about facilities available for education, vocational training and employment. It conducts workshops and seminars, and produces documentary films and television programmes to create awareness among the general public. The Department trains adolescents and adults with disability, and provides financial assistance to NGOs to set up vocational training and production units. It administers a vocational rehabilitation centre and self-employment institutes. It has an industrial training centre in Mysore and a polytechnic for courses in computer science, architecture and modern office practice. It also provides training in integrated education for teachers in normal and special schools. It administers central government schemes for the disabled. These provide assistance to organisations for developing services for the disabled in education, training, detection, prevention and rehabilitation of disabilities; this includes 90% assistance to voluntary organisations running special schools for children with visual, speech and hearing disability, and mental retardation; 90% assistance to organisations providing services for persons with mental retardation and cerebral palsy; and assistance through NGOs for disability aids.