Letting the light in

Dreams taken away ... “I always had an aspiration that I wouldn’t remain useless at home, that I would work hard and become empowered,” Sohel Rana says, enthusiastically while talking about his triumph over a world that had shut its eyes to him. His is the kind of story that inspires all those who hear of it.   Rana suffered from diarrhoea when he was three. It took him two weeks to recover from the disease, but it badly affected his eyesight. He could hardly participate in social events without feeling unwelcome, if not shunned. Constantly depending on others to get by, Rana’s daily life became a guessing game.   But, like a phoenix reborn from its ashes, Rana bounced back with the help of a community-based rehabilitation project. From there, through staving off the isolation, tackling the challenges and facing all the vicissitudes of life, Rana, now 22, is studying Islamic history at Dhaka University.   The dream-maker Rana was telling his story to the Weekend Tribune (WT) at a training programme jointly organised by Centre for Services and Information on Disability (CSID) and Bangladesh Computer Council at the BCC premises. Here, Rana and 17 other visually impaired young guns underwent a month-long computer training course aided by Sightsavers, a non-governmental organisation based in the UK.   During the programme, they were taught basic computer operations as well as general troubleshooting. Special computer software and brail computer training manuals were brought in from the UK to instruct them on the different operations of Microsoft Office.   Rima, a 17-year-old studying at Eden College, feels confident because of the workshop. “In this era of digitalisation, lack of knowledge in computer basics makes someone feel like a caveman. Blind I might be, but I simply don’t want to have that feeling,’ said Rima, 17, studying Bangla at Eden College.   Rifat Shahpar Khan, programme manager of Sightsavers, provided some useful information. Explaining about the programme, she said that a special assistive technology known as Screen Reader has been used in the training.   About the software... Screen Reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the computer screen. ‘This interpretation is then represented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output,” she said. Screen Reader is basically an audio interface. Rather than displaying web content visually for users in a “window” or screen on the monitor, Screen Reader converts text into synthesised speech so that the users can listen to the content.   Khan further explained, “Screen Reader doesn’t read web content quite like human beings do. Sometimes the voice sounds somewhat robotic and monotone. In addition, experienced users often like to speed up the reading rate to 300 words per minute or more, which is more than the inexperienced listener can easily understand.”    In fact, when many people hear a Screen Reader for the first time, at the normal rate of about 180 words per minute, they complain that it reads too quickly. “It takes time to get used to Screen Reader, but the interesting thing is that, once users get used to it, they can race through content at a speed that can amaze sighted individuals,” she said.   The Sightsavers official said that there are various screen reading software, including the NVDA (which is open sourced), DOLPHIN Pen (a comparatively low-cost flash drive that’s portable and can make any computers accessible to people with no or low vision) and JAWS software (which has to be purchased).   The project ahead Bangladesh Visualy Impaired People’s Society (BVIPS) is working with ShahJalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) to promote the university’s initiative to develop open source screen reading software in both Bangla and English. As of now, a total of 105 visually-impaired people have been trained under the programme, which was started in 2010. “So far, this project of CSID has employed 36 people with disabilities into various sectors. Similarly, the project of BVIPS with Sightsavers is creating the scope to employ many other visually impaired people through training in computers and ICT. Dr Nuruzzaman of the Directorate of Health of the government said “Children living in poverty have a particular vulnerability to visual disability. Disabled people generally experience higher rate of poverty, and they are often more severely marginalised than wealthier people.”   He said that the directorate is trying to make the visually impaired population self-sufficient so that they can feel functional, according to Dr Nuruzzaman.    The government is also liable to provide them with education, because Bangladesh is one of the 92 countries that signed Education for All (EFA) in 1994, which clearly states that those with special educational needs must have access to regular, if not special, schools that can accommodate them within a child-centred pedagogy capable of meeting those needs.