JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, July 28, 2025

Empowering the disabled through technology

by

2145 days ago
20190912

Thir­ty-five-year-old Can­dice John is no or­di­nary teacher. For the past three years, she has worked at Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties (NCPD) in San Fer­nan­do as res­i­dent In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (IT) In­struc­tor.

John is vi­su­al­ly im­paired, though if you look around her IT lab, it has the ap­pear­ance of any oth­er you would find at in­sti­tu­tions around the na­tion. Have a clos­er look and you would see that this is no or­di­nary lab.

As a per­son with a vi­su­al im­pair­ment, John is aware of the po­ten­tial chal­lenges of her trainees who have a wide range of dis­abil­i­ties: phys­i­cal, autism, deaf, hard of hear­ing, speech im­pair­ment, cere­bral pal­sy, Down’s Syn­drome, blind and vi­su­al­ly im­paired, in­tel­lec­tu­al and learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, as well as mild men­tal and seizure dis­or­ders.

While as­sis­tive tech­nol­o­gy such as spe­cialised com­put­er equip­ment or soft­ware pro­grams can help com­pen­sate for dis­abil­i­ties and im­pair­ments that af­fect hand dex­ter­i­ty, vi­sion, and hear­ing, the high cost of such tech­nol­o­gy makes per­son­al ac­qui­si­tion pro­hib­i­tive for many in­di­vid­u­als.

Over the past 14 years, In­ter­na­tion­al Game Tech­nol­o­gy (IGT), for­mal­ly known as GTECH, has part­nered with NCPD to do­nate re­quired as­sis­tive hard­ware and soft­ware to keep the IT lab con­tin­u­al­ly up­dat­ed and rel­e­vant.

Dur­ing a re­cent han­dover cer­e­mo­ny, the lab re­ceived an up­grade of com­put­er sys­tems and soft­ware as well as nine desk­top com­put­ers, three head­sets, an all-in-one print­er, an iMac, a touch screen lap­top, soft­ware, and six un­in­ter­rupt­ed pow­er sup­ply (UPS) de­vices. At the event, IGT Coun­try Man­ag­er Roger Bo­lai said: “IGT be­lieves that pro­vid­ing com­mu­ni­ties with the tools for ac­cess­ing knowl­edge and op­por­tu­ni­ties is an im­por­tant el­e­ment of so­ci­etal ad­vance­ment that is es­sen­tial in this age of in­stant-so­cial in­ter­ac­tion.”

In ad­di­tion to spe­cialised hard­ware like mous­es that are con­trolled by foot, joy­stick, or track­ball and large print key­boards de­signed with high-colour-con­trast let­ters, John teach­es trainees at NCPD how to use soft­ware to get their work done. For ex­am­ple, Drag­on Nat­u­rallySpeak­ing con­verts speech to text and JAWS (Job Ac­cess With Speech) is a screen read­er pro­gramme that en­ables a blind or vi­su­al­ly im­paired user to read the text that is dis­played on the com­put­er screen with a speech syn­the­siz­er or braille dis­play.

John com­ment­ed: “I’m proud of the work that we’re do­ing, and tech­nol­o­gy has en­abled us to do so much more, but I re­alise that many peo­ple don’t know much about the lives of the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty nor the ser­vices that we of­fer at NCPD.

There is a place in Trinidad and To­ba­go that wel­comes and trains all per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties—we don’t dis­crim­i­nate. If you have an ac­quired dis­abil­i­ty, there’s help.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored