KOHIMA, DECEMBER 4 (MExN): The Nagaland Board of School Education (NBSE) has announced that it will be launching a Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) chatbot on its website in honor of International Day of Disabled Persons which fell on December 3.
Developed in collaboration with Changeinkk Foundation, SLD Helpdesk is a chatbot that will provide support to parents, teachers, and students in the State and address all queries related to specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and dyspraxia.
The SLDs Helpdesk will be available in the Board’s portal nbsenl.edu.in. Schools are requested to avail all information regarding SLDs for the identification of such students and also to make the best use of the SLDs Helpdesk. The Heads of Institutions were also requested to disseminate this facility to the teachers and students.
The NBSE is launching the online tool for Specific Learning Disabilities (SLDs) in partnership with ChangeInkk Foundation in Delhi. The chatbot can be accessed at https://nbsenl.edu.in and will help parents and teachers with answers to commonly asked questions on SLDs.
In India, both the New Education Policy 2020 (NEP ’20) & the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act 2016 recognize SLDs and stress the importance of creating inclusive education for this population. The RPwD Act 2016 defines inclusive education as a “system of education wherein students with and without disabilities learn together and the system of teaching and learning is suitably adapted to meet the learning needs of different types of students with disabilities”.
The NBSE said it is committed to supporting individuals with disabilities to receive the right accommodations for various state-conducted examinations. They have already issued a notification elucidating guidelines on accommodations and requirements to include students with SLDs at the school level, available at https://nbsenl.edu.in/cms/document/174/notifications
Specific Learning Disabilities recognize the differences in the way people’s brain function, process information, and learn. They include Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, along with Dyspraxia. Individuals with SLDs have average or above average IQs, but struggle with processing language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself as a difficulty to comprehend, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations.
Nearly 5-15% of children struggle with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLDs) in India. The actual extent is not known, due to a lack of awareness and low levels of formal diagnosis (especially in local languages) in the country. As per global estimates, it could be as high as 1 in 5 students. This means that over 150 million individuals including 35 million school-aged children in India are affected by SLDs.
ChangeInkk Foundation is a non profit committed to creating pathways of success for neurodiverse individuals from cradle to career, in particular, those with SLDs by enabling an inclusive ecosystem. It is doing the pathbreaking work of bridging the massive awareness gap to support people with SLDs in India.
