Levi Sunday Clement, the acting head teacher of Rajaf Educational Center for the Blind transcribing an English book for Primary five using Perkins brailler on Monday, 21st November 2022 . Credit: Charles Wote/Eye Radio.

Levi Sunday Clement, a visually impaired teacher – and his colleagues have embarked on the tedious journey of transcribing lower primary school textbooks into braille to ease teaching and learning at Rajaf Educational Center for the blind.

The five teachers are currently transcribing mathematics, English, CRE, Social studies, and Science textbooks of primary 5 using a braille machine called Perkins brailler.

Perkins brailler has nine keys where six keys are corresponding to the six dots, a space bar, a backspace key, and a paper advance or line feed key.

It also has a thumb lever to move the typing head back to the beginning of a line.

Clement, the acting head teacher of the school for the blind says the transcription will help benefit the teachers in lesson planning.

“It will help a lot because any teacher can take any lesson because if you want to go to the class, you have to prepare your lesson,” he told Eye Radio in Juba.

Clement said without the transcription of the textbooks into the braille, it is not possible for them to teach.

“This transcription we are doing for us as the teachers because to make more copies in braille to the pupils, it must be done by the braille inverse.

There is a machine called braille inverse that can produce more copies but now we are doing it manually. This is just for the preparation of the lessons.”

Clement complains that the government does not consider the situation of visually impaired when developing or printing the curriculum.

The World Blind Union emphasizes that visually impaired people have the same universal rights and freedoms, including the right to life and full inclusion as equal citizens in society.

It stressed that they have the right to achieve their full economic, social, cultural, civil and political potential without restriction regardless of disability.

Levi Sunday Clement went on to say changes in the South Sudan curriculum has also affected them compare to what they transcribed in 2010.

“Since 2010, we transcribed all the textbooks except mathematics. But the change of curriculum is also a major challenge for us because when the curriculum comes out, it is in printing not in braille,” he said.

“So, I always raise this issue to the higher authority but none of them listen to us. If there is a change in curriculum, some of the textbooks must be in braille so that we can benefit from it but if it is all in printing, we cannot.”

In January this year, an activist for people with disabilities appealed to the government at all levels to assist visually impaired South Sudanese with braille materials.

Henry Swaka said the country has limited access to a Braille system that enables visually impaired to read and write.

This month, a local NGOs known as Resilience Organization started paying incentives to motive them transcribe the textbooks into the braille format.

This comes after the Norwegian Church Aid donated ten Perkins brailler to facilitate the transcription and other related work at Rajaf Educational Center for the blind.