A cyber cafe specially for visually challenged and blind people is opened in Chennai by Nethrodaya, a non-government organization (NGO). This cyber cafe is first of its kind in India and visually challenged citizens can use it for free.

Blind people browse the web using assisting software. But they are available only in developed countries. The cost of these softwares is very high and its very difficult for an average visually challenged Indian to buy and use.

Nethrodaya cyber cafe uses JAWS as the screen reader software to assist the visually challenged people to browse the web and operate other computer applications.

Sify has joined its hands with the cafe and provides free unlimited data transfer for this cyber cafe.

Nethrodaya is founded by C. Govindakrishnan. He was born with visual impairment. He founded the Nethrodaya Organiztion on October 2, 2002 with a vision to create a suitable environment for nurturing the abilities and talents of the visually impaired.

This is a great step and they are planing to launch similar cyber cafes in other cities.

Can you imagine a day without Internet? We use Internet for our assignments, projects, research and we learn more from Internet than reading books. But it is very difficult for blind or visually challenged people to browse the web as we do very easily. They have every right to access information as we have. These kind of initiatives will definitely help them.

If you are really interested to see how visually challenged people browse the web, see the following article.
Screen Readers and Web Accessibility: Must Watch Video by Yahoo Engineer