Zee News
14 October 2012
New Delhi

The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) will soon start undergraduate, post-graduate and Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) courses for deaf students, an official said Sunday.

The courses, under IGNOU's Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC) will start in a phased manner, it was announced here on the first foundation day of ISLRTC in the university campus.

"Our objective is to reach the unreached and with the establishment of ISLRTC, this mandate of the university stands tall," said Gopinath Pradhan, Vice-Chancellor, IGNOU.

"While introducing such programmes, we are aiming to improve the skills of the deaf community in the country and also uplifting a particular section in the society by imparting training to them."

A.S. Narayanan, General Secretary, National Association of the Deaf, said: "We are striving to have ISLRTC branches all over India. Currently, we need four lakh interpreters while there are merely two hundred."

ISLRTC, sponsored by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, was set up last year to strengthen the identity of Indian Sign Language (ISL) as a bona fide language and promote its use in educational and social settings.