"Audio Books" are produced at the "Multimedia DAISY Resource Centre" (MDRC) at Mitra Jyothi. The MDRC converts hard copy paper books to human voice recorded audio books in the DAISY format (Digital Accessible Information System) for the specific use of people with various visual disabilities (low vision to 100% Blind) and print disabilities (dyslexia and other such learning disorders included).
Means to education and the level of education amongst persons with disabilities in India is very poor. The situation only gets worse when it comes to higher education especially amongst people with visual impairment and multiple disabilities.
On the one hand, new technologies such as screen readers for computers, automated brailling process, OCR, text to speech conversion engines (even in Indian Languages) etc are emerging and evolving, which is making the lives of persons with visual impairment and other disabilities much better while on the other hand it is a challenge to have these advancements reach the right group of people. This huge responsibility has been taken up by a handful of non-governmental agencies like Mitra Jyothi.
At this time, Mitra Jyothi's Educational Resource Centre (ERC) under whose umbrella the MDRC functions has an outreach of 7500+ Primary Beneficiaries and an estimated 30000+ secondary beneficiaries who utilize a collection more than 2400+ books (text books, reference books, guides, fiction and non-fiction general novels and other general reading books) and magazines in the DAISY format and Braille Books. The same needs to be operational and functional for a long period of time for people in need
