Special Education: Exploration of strategies to meet the needs of the disabled in India

Abstract

Polio Vaccination was invented in 1954, When I was just 15 months old I had a severe attack of Polio resulting in my locomotor disability. My parents had no idea about Polio or the vaccination. None in the village knew about it. From then and now when I am working as a Professor of Distance Education at the Indira Gandhi National Open University, my life has been a series of challenges and struggles. My experiences as a physically disabled person prompted me to think of disability issues not as an observer but as a participant in facing all odds and challenges posed by disability. The journey from a remote village in Tamil Nadu, Southern India to Delhi, and the Capital of India has been a long one, literally and metaphorically.