062107: Blind youths get computer training in Davao

By Manuel T. Cayon

Reporter

DAVAO CITY—Four gifted blind youths face their individual computer monitors, or rather, tract their keys and inputs through a voice-aided computer and a two-inch-thick Braille system instruction workbook, as computer instructor Karen Alberca gives a slow but firm dictation of the day’s examination on the basics of computer use. Acob Savik of South Cotabato deftly runs his fingers through the keyboard to type the answers, all spelled out words of computer abbreviations, as Shallee Kate Gayanilo of Koronadal City, Brian Pelino of General Santos City and Jemmer Jones Ramos of Agdao this city also catch up with their answers. Heads usually veered to the side than facing the monitor, the four students of the computer training provided by the service institution Resources for the Blind  Inc. (RBI) keenly listen to a software contained in a flash drive called USB, which gives a voice prompt or cue on what the user has so far keyed in or inputted in the computer. Alberca said the four students were handpicked from a tedious search of the RBI’s field personnel from around the many provinces of Mindanao, and candidates must have notched a higher academic performance and have a knack and interest to use the computer. Three of the students have less difficulty in passing the academic measurement “because they studied in special schools.” The other one was schooled in a regular public high school and expressed concern that he would be discriminated. Prose Olaso, a field educator of RBI Davao City before being  assigned as press relation officer, said the search for students has sent her to the different areas in Mindanao and as far as the dangerous places as those identified as bailiwicks of the Abu Sayyaf in Western Mindanao. The four students would undergo an 11-hour daily session for one week on familiarization of the computer, basic computer use and word processing. The session would be aided by the Smartdrive, a software called “freedom box” that is contained in a USB. It costs P10,000 for the software and each student has a USB containing the freedom box, and Alberca said that each USB has an authorization component “and cannot be pirated.” The freedom box proves to be handy and accessible than the previous software they used last year called Job Access With Speech, or Jaws. “Also, Jaws is expensive, at P40,000 to P50,000 per software,” she said. Each trainee would be given the USB-contained software after graduation as RBI’s continued help to the scholar after the training. Four more batches of scholars in one-week session each are scheduled after this batch. “We want them to explore a wider horizon than turning into their usual and inevitable career path of becoming masseurs or beggars,” said Amy Mojica, RBI Davao City branch director. “Even providing massage has saturated the place already,” she told BusinessMirror. The computer program for the blind started out last year, and has already turned one of its products into a topnotch student of a medical transcription school here, besting all the other students with no physical infirmities and have medical and other professional degrees behind them. “Trained in the mainstream classroom, with doctors, nurses, lawyers and mass communication graduates, Honey Baula topped her training in the Medical Transcription School,” Alberca said. The RBI went into computer training for blind recipients of its several livelihood and self-help programs to break into the business process outsourcing, the newest industry “where it would only be audio-based and with adequate training could turn the blind into competitive individuals.” “Baula shows us there is hope for the seeing-impaired to live and become like any other normal sighted persons,” Mojica said. RBI started out as a personal project of Dr. Arthur Lown, a retired director of the US’ Atlanta Public Schools Services for Blind Students, who moved to the Philippines in 1972 as administrator of the Manila branch of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. The institute was a Protestant-based program translating the Bible to the different dialects in the country, and later into a Braille version for the blind. Lown died last week, Mojica said.

 

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/06212007/economy05.html