Regional Braille Press is a very special unit of the Ramakrishna Mission Blind Boys’ Academy, Narendrapur. Book is an indispensable part of education. Apart from this very fact, the Braille books have always been in dire need compared to their normal ink-printed books. As a consequence, throughout the passage of time, the utter need of printing the Braille Books have come in relevance for the numerous blind students across the globe. The Ramakrishna Mission Blind Boys’ Academy, Narendrapur made a humble beginning in 1966 by starting a Braille Press to emboss books for the blind. In 1967, the Govt. of India designated the Braille Press as the Regional Braille Press for the Eastern and North Eastern Region of our country. It is the only Govt. affiliated Braille Press in this part of the country.
With each passing day, the press is showing greater levels of efficiency and production. It covers variety of languages (viz. Assamese, Oriya, Manipuri, Sanskrit, Bengali & English). Besides text books, story books and other general books are also prepared here. Religious classics the Ramayana, the Gita Sar Sangraha were taken up. On the occasion of 150th Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, The Gitanjali has been embossed in Braille in 2010. This Braille Press prints text books of all subjects including Mathematics and Science up to class XII. The Regional Braille Press has been assigned the task of supplying text books by the States of West Bengal, Manipur and Assam under the Sarva Shiksha Abhijan. Every year the Braille Press publishes a calendar in braille. This calendar is supplied to over 1000 individuals and institutions all over India.
In 1996, a Computerized Braille production unit was initiated by installing a Norwegian Computer operated Braille Embosser – Braillo 400 S and then updated versions (Braillo 600 SR & 2 numbers of Braillo 650 SW) one after another have been installed to accelerate the production. Today the Press has three (3) such machines and it has emerged as one of the biggest Braille Production units in the country, perhaps, having the largest printing capacity. Books printed at the Braille Press are made available to the Visually Impaired readers at highly subsidized cost (1/4th of the production cost) which is noteworthy.
For its significant contribution, in the field of production and distribution of reading materials of diverse subjects in Braille, our press received National Award in 2009 and 2016 from the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment and also the State Award from the Ministry of Women & Child Development & Social Welfare, Govt. of West Bengal in 2009 as the best Regional Braille Press in India and in Bengal.