Chief Justice Sought Visually Impaired Lawyer's Help. Here's Why

In a bid to make the software used by the Supreme Court accessible to those visually impaired, Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud sought assistance of senior lawyer S K Rungta and asked him how he follows written arguments of lawyers and gets them converted into a braille document.

Rungta, who lost his vision at a very young age, was responding to the written submissions of eminent senior lawyers in a case related to the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission before a bench which comprised the CJI and Justices Hima Kohli and J B Pardiwala.

"I wanted to ask you a personal question. I hope you do not mind. The other counsel is citing a compilation, how do you follow it," the CJI asked, adding "I am chairing the e-committee as you know, and this (making software accessible to all) is one of my missions." The senior lawyer said he was more than willing to assist the top court in its noble cause and explained how he responds to written arguments in courts instantly.

The senior lawyer said he gets the soft copy of the compilation of documents of other lawyers in his pen drive and uses his computer to convert them in Braille.

He also said the software used by the top court should be compatible with the software used by people with visual disabilities.

The CJI asked the senior lawyer to "give a little bit of his time".

Justice Chandrachud told the senior lawyer he will ask the head scientist of the National Informatics Centre to have a meeting with him to work together for making the court's software disabled-friendly.

The CJI said some changes have been made to the official website of the top court by making it accessible through audio captchas.

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