The Chennai-based Third Eye Charitable Trust has transcribed 19 popular classics in Bengali and English into Braille and were unveiled at a function here today.
"These children should also have a social and cultural life, besides education. Making available these books in braille format will inculcate reading habits among them", Mahua Seth, founder trustee of the NGO, told PTI here.
Besides 'Malgudi Days', other works such as 'Short stories' by O' Henry, Tales from Arabian Nights and Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, 'The story of my experiments with truth' have been made available in braille by them.
Bengali authors whose works have been converted include Satyajit Ray, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Sukumar Ray and Bibhutibhushan Bandhopadhyay.
The books will be given away free to 19 schools, 17 of which are from West Bengal and two from Tripura.
Devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, a visually challenged Frenchman, the Braille system is a tactile method of writing widely used by such people to read and write.
More From This Section
Under the initiative, the NGO plans to publish more such stories of Tagore, R K Laxman and R K Narayan besides folk tales for visually-challenged children despite printing costs being a major constraint.
"Most of them would be in vernacular languages like Tamil, Bengali and Hindi so that even children from the rural areas who do not know English can understand", Mahua said.
Earlier, they had partnered with National Association for the Blind to publish Tagore's Nobel-winning 'Gitanjali' into Braille format.