OUTREACH DIVISION
As the annual turnover of professional manpower trained through the regular institutions could hardly meet the demand of trained manpower in the area of special education and rehabilitation, the council envisaged its vision to render services to all people with disabilities in the country and providing them age and disability appropriate continuum of rehabilitation services, opted for the other mode of curriculum transaction, i.e., distance mode. The Outreach Division has been started in the Council to monitor the distance education programmes, inter-ministerial/ departmental coordination, application of emerging technologies, project evaluation and assessment and resource generation.

DISTANCE EDUCATION CELL
The distance education programmes initially launched by the council in 2000-01 in collaboration with the Madhya Pradesh Bhoj (Open) University have made tremendous impact on the human resource development in the area of special education. Therefore the council had signed MOUs with a number of other open universities to offer distance education courses, especially in regional languages. The Distance Education Cell continued to monitor the Distance Education Programmes.

EDUSAT/DRS – NAVSHIKHAR CHANNEL
In order to transform the way the persons with disabilities are being educated, the Council launched a joint venture with Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and Medial Lab Asia (MLA), viz., “EDUSAT” up linking station and TV studio located in the RCI building to connect more than 500 Study Centers /recognized institutions via satellite to disseminate information for improving the quality of training in the field of disability rehabilitation and special education in the country. The Studio was inaugurated by Smt.Meira Kumar, Hon’ble Union Minister for Social Justice & Empowerment on October5, 2007. The channel was named as “Navshikhar” by the Hon’ble Minister.
In order to expand the programme at the national level, the Council had started a project “A Comprehensive Satellite/Internet Based National Network for Education, Training and Empowerment of the Disabled” in February 2007 in collaboration with ISRO & MLA. The project is manned by technical staff engaged on contract basis. Live programmes are telecast on different topics to over 220 institutions where the DRS facility has already been provided by the Council from Monday through Thursday.

NATIONAL INTERACTIVE WEB PORTAL ON DISABILITY
The Council in collaboration with Media Lab Asia has developed a comprehensive national web portal on disability which will be a gateway to all related information regarding differently disability issues. The promotion of web portals on the internet is one of the initiatives of National Knowledge Commission to open up knowledge sources and resources for public use. The portal is designed to provide all related information regarding different disability issues at one platform. This will enable persons with disabilities, NGOs, professionals, policy makers, students, parents, community workers and all other stakeholders to access information relating to the disability sector.