Pon Sakthivel, 34, is a man of many talents. Working as a Tamil teacher at the Government Higher Secondary School in Silattur near Aranthangi, Mr. Sakthivel, who was born with visual disability, has taken it upon himself to open the world of books and reading to others with poor vision, by digitising printed material in user-friendly formats.

He also runs a YouTube channel to review books, and a Readers’ Club for visually challenged members on subscription.

“Books are important for educating the visually challenged, and for a long time, we have relied on sighted human helpers to read them out to us. Converting printed books into digital versions that can be heard through text-to-speech programs or read by a Braille machine, helps visually challenged students pursue their studies independently. Many blind children drop out of the education system due to a lack of user-friendly learning material,” Mr. Sakthivel told The Hindu.

The teacher began the digitisation project in 2019 after using the same methodology for his Ph.D research at Gandhigram Rural University, on journals for visually impaired readers. “I used my fellowship funds to buy a duplex scanner for ₹69,000. Once I became a teacher, I realised that this could be of use to many others with vision problems, and so continued with it,” he said.

Mr. Sakthivel’s operates his project from his family’s farm homestead in Shanmuganathapuram South village.

He uses a heavy-duty manual paper cutter to detach the spine from the books. “This is the first step, as each page has to be scanned clearly and without the bump caused by binding,” he said, cranking the cutter with a sharp downward push.

He feeds the detached pages into a duplex scanner that scans both sides in one go. These are saved as Portable Document Format (PDF) files on his laptop.

“I use Optical Character Recognition [OCR] technology that converts the PDFs into editable, searchable and machine-readable digital text. My phone helps me organise the information according to the page order and topic. My laptop and phone are like my eyes,” he said.

Mr. Sakthivel visits book fairs across the state to collect titles to digitise for his Readers’ Club members, who each contribute ₹500 for the group. “I use the money to buy the titles recommended by members. The rest of the overheads for travel and taking a sighted companion along, are borne by me. The digitisation is free of charge for all,” he said. He also accepts books from blind students for conversion.

Among the books he has digitised, are The Private Diary of Ananda Ranga Pillai (12 volumes), M. Karunanithi’s autobiography Nenjukuu Neethi (six volumes) and Ki. Rajanarayanan’s complete works compiled in nine volumes.

“I am now looking at converting textbooks for competitive exams. This will need financial donations, because the books are costlier,” he said. He credits his family’s unstinting support for his success.