India’s first-ever radio channel for the visually impaired, ‘Radio Aksh’ was launched in the city of Nagpur on Tuesday, April 12.
Launched by the Blind Relief Association Nagpur (TBRAN) and Samdrushti Kshamata Vikas Avam Anusandhan Mandal (Saksham), this concept was created to help the visually-impaired gain seamless access to education resources and audiobooks.
The content is created by a dedicated team of 20 trained volunteers, mostly women, which can be streamed to the visually impaired across the world.
The channel is available on Play Store and via Zeno Radio on Apple devices.
In order to run it 24×7, Radio Aksh would initially have six hours of content that would be put on repeat mode four times a day. Later, the content will be increased to 24 hours phase-wise, Makarand Pandharipande, president of TBRAN, told The Times of India.
Shirish Darvekar, the coordinator of the channel and a member of Saksham told ANI: “For the last few years, visually impaired people used to come to us and get their audiobooks made by us on their devices. But COVID-19 put this to a halt. It affected their learning so we had to think of a stand-by arrangement. We got to know of launch of internet radio in India and we got in contact with a company making software for it. Unlike FM and AM, internet radio has no geographical limits,” he added.
Darvekar said that their channel has got limited, yet an overwhelming response from people.
“In just two to four days, we have around 161 listeners. It paints a very encouraging picture,” he added.