Monday, July 26, 2004 Editorial: Concrete and vital
AT THE University of Wisconsin in the United States, a course trains future professionals in augmentative communication and interface technologies. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, the university builds up skills in speech-language pathology, special education, occupational therapy, physical therapy and rehabilitation engineering.
The goal is to use technology to give access to those needing it the most: persons with disability (PWDs).
At the Cebu Braille Center Inc. (CBCI), officer-in-charge Amor Flores counts on two center teachers and an itinerant mentor to handle classes, tutorials, follow-ups and Braille transcriptions for center clientele, some of whom are not just visually impaired (VI) but also having multiple handicaps.
At the KGS Corp. plant located at the Mactan Economic Zone 2, 70 percent of the world’s supply of Braille cells is produced. These are the core components in the smallest and lightest state-of-the-art gadgets facilitating access to information technology for VIs in Europe and Japan. The devices cost from $1,300 to $6,000 per unit, around P73,000 to P336,000—unimaginable in a country where workers are still waiting to receive an adjusted daily minimum wage of P193-208.
At CBCI, college sophomore Catherine Unger can hone her basic computer skills five days a week, from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., provided she waits for her turn at any of the four center computers. There is no Internet connection and no extension of computer use as these expenses are not covered by the City Hall subsidy.
Worlds apart
In a letter published in Sun.Star Cebu’s May 24, 2004 “Speak Out” section, Joseph Dabon questioned the country’s lack of equal opportunity for the disabled. After meeting PWDs working at factories while on training in Korea, Dabon regretted that the visually disabled here are encouraged to become masseurs and caregivers but not as computer programmers and Information Technology (IT) specialists.
Fred Kintanar, manager of the design engineering department of the NEC Telecom Software Philipines Inc., said he is not aware of any policy promoting or opposing the employment of the disabled in the IT industry. He said PWDs, like other college graduates, have to be competitive though and prove that they have the specialized knowledge required by firms.
Given the state-of-the-art of assistive or rehabilitative technology, Kintanar said technology is now available to enable workers with special physical or perceptual constraints. For VIs, for instance, there are readers, gadgets using voice synthesizers that read aloud the text displayed on the monitor.
Kintanar pointed out that the World Wide Web Consortium headed by Tim Berners-Lee, which coordinates the development of the Web, has proposed guidelines to make information space accessible to PWDs. Kintanar cited, as an example, that most web pages are in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Compared to a proprietary technology like Macromedia Flush plugin, HTML is a language that can be browsed by the disabled, using devices creating a tactile display that can be “read” like Braille by VIs.
Earthy wish
Advanced tactile displays costing hundreds of thousands of pesos are not even within the realm of dreams imagined by Dominggo Mahusay and Renato Pueblos. Mahusay, a blind masseur, and polio victim Pueblos showed up during the recent launching of the Philippine Registry for Disabled Persons. Both men hope that the registration will give them access to employment and capital-down-to-earth desires that quiet a growling stomach and grant them the dignity of self-reliance.
Although seemingly anachronistic in the Information Age, local PWDs’ basic concerns continue to be relevant. In an address made before a 1995 annual meeting of the G7, representing the world’s seven wealthiest nations, a South African official pointed out that the Information Revolution should be about people: how the “haves” and “have-nots” can use the new technology to empower themselves; to keep themselves informed about the truth of their own circumstances; and to give themselves a voice that all the world can hear.
One hopes that, even after the 26th National Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Week closed last July 23, government and the private sector will forge on to connect the disabled, through concrete and vital links, to the rest of the world.
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