Visually impaired student clears exam in flying colours

Born without sight, her parents and doctors realised when she was 15 days old that her blindness was irreversible - however, she proved she was no less than a normal student by scoring 465 out of 500 in the Class 10 board examinations. 

The student of Little Flower Convent for Blind and Deaf recalls her experience during the exams. “We were assigned a different scribe for every subject based on their expertise. To help us dictate clearly and more importantly, to help scribes understand how to write the answers, we wrote all the exams starting from Class 9 in this method,” she said. Till Class 8, visually impaired students are trained to answer one and two mark questions on their own in Braille using a special stick. 

During the boards, Shobana said she built a strong rapport with some of her scribes. “We meet the scribes only once the exam starts — none of us know them from before or keep in touch after. But during the exams, if I finished within the allotted time, I would sit and chat with them about anything and everything,” said the youngster. On Monday morning, before the results were announced, Shobana said she was quite nervous. “I expected to score a centum in maths because my mother is a Masters graduate in the subject. At 9.30 am, when we checked the scores, I found out that I got 98. 

We spent the rest of the day celebrating and I ate a lot of ice cream.” she smiled. She said she would like to pursue history, geography, computer science and economics as her major subjects in Class 11. Her hobbies include playing the keyboard, violin and singing.   Her parents, Prakash and Gayathri couldn’t be happier that their daughter has scored so well. They said, “When she was born blind, we never thought she would go on to become one of the toppers of her school. We are very proud of her.” The family resides in Tambaram Sanitorium, and Shobana has a younger sister, who is in Class 4.