Visually-challenged writers aim to share their stories

Pune: The Ekansh Trust has organized a story-writing competition for the visually-challenged. The NGO works towards inclusion and empowerment of persons with disabilities.

“The Harry Potter series has been published in Braille but the books fail to capture the interest of the visually-challenged because everything in it is so visual like people disappearing into the wall, stairs that change direction, and magical beasts. Even in Shakespeare’s plays, there are a lot of visual elements involved, like how the stage is lit, shadow play, and so on. This competition will encourage visually-challenged people to write their own stories based on their interactions with the world,” said Ekansh Trust founder Anita Iyer.

Although there have been many great visually-challenged writers throughout history, such as Hellen Keller, Homer, even John Milton, yet there haven’t been many such writers in popular contemporary literature.

The competition, called Readiscovery, is open to visually-challenged adults across India. “Entries should be original stories from any genre, in a concise, concentrated format in English ranging between 1,000-3,000 words, to be submitted in DOC/PDF format and emailed to the NGO. The assistance of a scribe or translator is allowed. The last date for submission is February 20,” said Iyer. The stories will be judged by a panel of visually-challenged readers and mythology-fiction author Kavita Kane.


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