ISLAMABAD: The Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) will be starting e-learning ‘Accessibility Centres’ for visually impaired students at 44 of the varsity’s regional offices within a month.

“After a successful pilot project in the university’s main campus, we will be establishing accessibility centres at our regional offices as soon as possible,” said AIOU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Shahid Siddiqui.

According to a press release, the first of the accessibility centres was inaugurated in Multan, which will cater to students from South Punjab. When inaugurating the first accessibility centre in a regional office, Dr Siddiqui said the centres will attend to the needs of marginalised segments of society. The VC said AIOU is already providing visually impaired students with free education, scholarships, books and other learning materials.

All accessibility centres will be equipped with computers, scanners, printers and software through which visually impaired students can access content on the internet.

It was also decided to set up a well equipped library at each of AIOU’s offices. A regional librarian’s coordination office has also been established at the main campus for coordinating and monitoring libraries and accessibility centres across the country.

All of the libraries will be open the whole week and will provide academic support to AIOU students as well as students from other educational institutions. All the libraries will be linked with the central library in Islamabad, which will be equipped with more than 4,000 digital research resources.

The press release quoted the varsity’s vice chairman as saying that special focus will be given to developing libraries for research purposes and bringing the university’s learning standards at par with international standards. A training session for librarians will also be held next month.

The VC also said that scanned copied of textbooks will also be made available on the internet for the benefit of the varsity’s 1.3 million students across the country.

Published in Dawn September 26th, 2016