Dinesh Wankhade, a 30-year-old visually impaired person comes from a village in Amravati district, Maharashtra. He was born with no vision and his parents were less hopeful about his future as they were unaware on how to raise a blind child. He began his education at the age of 4 in a residential school in Chikhaldara. However, he was brought back home when his parents realised that the school did not provide a clean and hygienic environment. A few years later, Dinesh was informed of a blind school within the Amravati district which provided a better educational environment as well as trained their students in music. His parents hoped that a career in music would back up as a profession for their visually impaired son if not anything else. But he was not able to continue further than Class 7 in the same school as they did not have the required facilities to teach. Following this, Dinesh had to shift between two more schools before he completed Class 12. He also faced difficulty with inaccessible study materials due to which he had cleared his Class 12 exams only on his second attempt.
Coming from an economically backward family, Dinesh faced financial constraints and had to pursue graduation through correspondence mode. He recognised that visually impaired people are seen as a liability to society and he wanted to change this mindset by serving his community through the public service sector. While pursuing graduation, he came to know about government jobs provided by the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) and decided to enrol in a coaching centre to prepare for the MPSC exam.
He contacted the Eyeway Helpdesk to seek information on how to purchase a Daisy player which would record his MPSC study material. But on further conversation with the counselor, he realised that he couldn’t even afford a Daisy player. Therefore, as an alternate solution the counselor apprised him of a group named ‘Yashowani’ from Pune which works for visually impaired people by providing audio study material free of cost. He was then guided by the counselor to view the list of books available to him through Yashowani and how to obtain them. While waiting for the required study materials to be couriered to him, the Eyeway counselor motivated Dinesh to do a focused self-study and start his preparation without further ado. We hope to help Dinesh all the way until he realizes his ambition.