Assistant professor P. Ram Kumar (29), HoD English at the Kasturba Gandhi Government College for Women, is blind since birth.
This, however, has never stop-ped him from scaling new heights as was proven on Friday when he received a PhD degree from the Pondicherry University.
“I didn’t face any problems in school or college. My friends and teachers were always supportive and treated me warmly. At the age of six I was admitted in a hostel and my friends took care of me for 19 years,” he recalled.
“Till Plus-2 I studied un-der the Braille system. Wh-ile pursuing BA English from Loyola College, Chen-nai, I would either record the class lectures or my friends would read out the material and I would rec-ord it as the study material for tertiary education was not available in Braille.
“During my third year my father J.D.M. Paghan gave me a computer. Besides that I used the JAWS (Job Access with Speech) software available for visually challenged people to transcribe text into voice,” he added.
Ram Kumar is also the first visually challenged person to become the president of a students’ wing of the University in the country.
His M.Phil. thesis was more special as it was related to the visually challen-ged community titled: How to Teach English to Vis-ually Challenged Students. It was published as a handbook for teachers in July 2000.
He was pursuing his PhD full time from Pondicherry University till he was offer-ed the post of assistant professor in a government college on merit basis.
“Subsequently I did my PhD part-time and completed it after my viva-voice was evaluated by a three-member team on Friday,” he said.
