In many ways, Microsoft is proud to be making a real and significant impact on ordinary South African people and organisations. This issue features a range of inspiring stories that illustrate just how meaningful a difference we are making to the lives of learners, students, disabled people and all those unsung heroes who work so tirelessly to help uplift and develop historically under-privileged sectors of society.
In this issue:
· PumaScope Project benefits community schools
· Rural school takes the initiative
· Technology opens new horizons for rural students
· Academy breaks cycle of poverty
· Young developer soars after Microsoft exposure
· Technology opens new horizons for the intellectually impaired
· Rural school uses technology to get ahead
· Computer literacy opens new doors for student
· Technology gives young mother new hope
· Junior Software Developer project helps bridge the digital divide
· Technology offers opportunities for rural students
· Technology ‘opens doors for the blind’
· Technology centre gives KZN’s disabled new hope
PumaScope Project benefits community schools
Educators and learners in more than 50 schools in rural Mpumalanga are benefiting from an innovative community-based learning programme, the PumaScope project, which sees university students teaching basic computer literacy skills during their vacations.
Many of these schools have computer laboratories through corporate sponsorships, but have until now lacked the basic skills needed to use them. The PumaScope training is now allowing them to use the facilities to improve computer literacy among the rural youth, thereby boosting their chances of employment.
PumaScope, which run by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria in collaboration with the Mpumalanga Department of Education and Microsoft, has been so successful that a follow-up course – focusing on computer programming – has already been presented to a group of selected grade 10 to 12 learners.
Project coordinator Dr Hein Venter says the original PumaScope project provided a platform for rolling out basic computer literacy and Computer Science knowledge in rural areas.
“Many schools are fully equipped with modern computer technology, but are not in a position to reap the proper benefit intended by sponsors. They face the challenge of utilising the computers productively and of obtaining qualified teachers to teach Computer Studies to their learners,” says Dr Venter.
After the schools are identified by the Mpumulanga Department of Education, two second-year Computer Science students are assigned to each school. After being trained to teach the basic computer literacy curriculum, the students work at the rural schools for two weeks during university holidays under the guidance and monitoring of the project co-ordinator Dr Venter, who literally drives from school to school to check on the progress.
The training is conducted on Microsoft software under the Microsoft Academic Software Alliance Programme.
Rural school takes the initiative
A state school in the heart of the rural Eastern Cape province is showing its big-city cousins across the country how to save energy, reduce carbon emissions and improve the quality of learning through the use of technology.
One of the first schools in South Africa to achieve eco-school status, the Byletts Combined School in rural Cintsa village, near East London, is at the heart of a rural computing initiative which has seen it undertake a number of projects related to energy consumption and environmental education.
By calculating the energy consumption of ICTs in the school and the impact these have on the environment, Byletts pupils have planted enough indigenous trees to make the school lab totally carbon-neutral, while still accessing the modern technologies that will equip these rural learners with the skills to cope in the modern world of business.
In 2006, the Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa (WESSA) launched the Eskom Energy and Sustainability programme at Byletts. The programme was a resounding success on many levels.
Yolanda Peters, ICT facilitator at Byletts, said the project not only encouraged cross-curricular teaching, engaged teachers from different learning areas and addressed the issues of carbon emissions and climate change. It also provided the impetus to integrate the school’s Dell Foundation and Microsoft-sponsored computer laboratory across learning areas, including natural sciences and mathematics. This ‘real-world’ learning has been extremely valuable.
To bring the learning programme into technology lessons, a ‘Carbon Calculator’ audit programme was developed in Microsoft Excel that allowed learners to input their audit findings directly into their computers. This tool was then used to make all relevant calculations and projections.
Having worked out their carbon emission levels, the learners then planted enough indigenous trees on the school grounds to ‘soak up’ the carbon produced in the course of a typical school year.
Ms Peters presented this innovative project at the African regional Microsoft Innovative Teachers Awards in Accra, Ghana from 27-28 May 2008. Bill Gates has invited the winners from the regional forums to the Microsoft campus in Redmond in June 2008 to see the latest in classroom technology, talk with those involved in developing resources for teachers and schools and share their experience and expertise with Microsoft.
In 2006 the school received support from Microsoft through the company’s Partners in Learning programme. Last year, this programme saw the school receive further support in the form of teacher capacity-building and courses addressing the integration of technology into schools.
The school is also the proud recipient of a brand-new computer lab, thanks to multinational computer manufacturer Dell and Microsoft. The lab is sure to be put to full use: Byletts plans to contribute even further to the development of employability skills by deploying Microsoft’s Digital Literacy Curriculum, and has plans to offer the internationally certified MS IT Academy programme within the next year.
Technology opens new horizons for rural students
Students in the remote village of Rotterdam, near Tzaneen in the Limpopo Province, have discovered that the world is a small place when you have access to the internet, thanks to the vision of teacher Victor Ngobeni.
Ngobeni, a geography teacher and deputy principal at the Rotterdam High School, was recently honoured as one of the world’s most innovative teachers for his efforts to use technology to change the lives of his learners.
Ngobeni’s approach was simple: “We may be an isolated village that is not exposed to urban things, but with access to the internet, we belong to the global village,” he said.
He started by taking his students on a field trip to the town of Tzaneen, some 100km away, to experience a taste of urban life. Using their experiences, they wrote a series of essays and poems about the pressures of urban life. They also developed advertisements for local businesses, such as a driving school, a dry cleaner and a poultry project, and sold these advertisements back to the business owners.
Back at the school’s basic computer laboratory, Ngobeni got his students to link up with two schools in the US – the John Muir High School in California and Henry Senachwine High School in Illinois – to exchange information about their lives and learn about other cultures.
“Teachers sometimes tend to adhere to a strict textbook-based structure, and often forget to help their learners experience what the outside world is like,” said Ngobeni. “I am motivated by the fact that my students do not have all of the opportunities that urban life has to offer. My responsibility is to try to expose them to these opportunities, while making their learning fun.”
Ngobeni’s achievements are all the more noteworthy when one considers that he only used a computer for the first time in 2002.
The response by the students has been outstanding, says Ngobeni. “They did things I never thought they were capable of. They seemed to enjoy working on the internet, and soon started discovering things by themselves. At times we worked in the computer lab until six in the evening and very rarely would you here learners complain about going home. This shows that they enjoyed what they were doing.”
Cynthia Maluleke, one of Ngobeni’s Grade 11 learners, said the programme had been “extremely useful”. “When we go to college or university, we will be expected to be computer literate and to be able to use the internet. This project has opened our eyes to the outside world, and has helped us a lot.”
Academy breaks cycle of poverty
Three years ago, 20-year-old James Mefolo was a rural matriculant without money, hope or prospects. Today, this softly-spoken young man from a small village in the Limpopo Province is working full-time as an IT Technician at a company in Johannesburg after completing a network administrator course at a Microsoft IT Academy.
“The Microsoft IT Academy has changed my life. Thanks to my qualifications, I am now able to have a career that will allow me to repay my student loan and create a new life for myself,” said Mefolo.
Young developer soars after Microsoft exposure
A past graduate of Microsoft’s Graduate Programme in South Africa is building a flourishing small business after developing a unique billing system for the mobile telecommunications industry that is already attracting interest from some of Africa’s biggest cellular operators.
Alkesh Singh, the Managing Director of Durban-based development house Astel, says “the sky is the limit” after developing the new system, which reduces his primary client’s billing time – for a base of 120 000 postpaid subscribers - from six hours to five minutes.
Singh says much of the success of the system is due to the Microsoft platform he uses to build his applications on. “Not only is Visual Basic a stable platform, but because of the .NET environment, we are able to build in functionality very rapidly on a solid core depending on the customer’s needs,” he said.
Singh’s career has flourished since his exposure to Microsoft as a young graduate, moving from programming to implementations consultant for a billing vendor within the space of five years. Today he has a team of eight people – six developers and a consultant – working in his company, which has been running for more than 20 months. Of those, three people were taken directly from universities without working experience, but have blossomed while working within the Microsoft environment.
“The performance of the system has been fantastic, and the interest has been very good,” said Singh. “We’re now looking at adding other key modules depending on what the market requires. For me the real benefit is the value that users are getting from the system: great performance, good change management, and the ability to make changes literally overnight.”
Astel is in the process of becoming a Microsoft certified partner, which Singh believes will open new doors for the company as far afield as Africa and the Middle East.
Technology opens new horizons for the intellectually impaired
At a modest building that used to house the local day clinic in Eldorado Park, a small group of passionate educators and volunteers are working to give more than 100 intellectually impaired children the chance to carve their own niches in society.
Here, at the Don Mattera School for the Mentally Challenged, headmaster Eric Batchelor and his staff battle a woeful lack of resources – and a raft of socio-economic issues – to give these young people the life skills they will need to make their way in an unforgiving world.
It is well-nigh impossible to comprehend the challenges being faced by the school by those who have never been there. Differently-abled children place immense and varied demands on educational infrastructure, from educators, trainers and facilitators to physical environmental design.
In the grindingly poor community of Eldorado Park, the challenges are magnified: More than a third of the children have to be fed by the school – and for many of them, it is their only meal of the day. And yet, their delight at seeing visitors is profoundly moving. They touch your hand, light up at your smile.
Suddenly, the careless hurtfulness of terms like “mentally retarded” and “disabled” becomes clear. There’s nothing disabled about these young people. They are differently abled. As Batchelor points out, this puts the focus on what they can do, as opposed to what they cannot. It creates expectations that they might have exciting knowledge unknown to us; that they have not had the chance to show off what they have created in their minds. The tools have been few and the environment has not even looked.
That’s all starting to change, thanks to the efforts of Frank Tapala, a former information technology (IT) student at the University of Johannesburg who came to the school a couple of years ago as part of a student community project – and never left. Now an IT team leader at the University, Tapala is a key cog in the school’s efforts to achieve better learning outcomes through the use of technology.
Tapala manages the school’s servers and IT support, and proudly oversees the brand new computer laboratory, made possible by a donation of Dell computers and an interactive whiteboard through software maker Microsoft’s Partners in Learning programme. The programme includes Microsoft’s Digital Literacy training for the teachers.
It’s early days yet, but Batchelor and occupational therapist Amina Louw are cautiously excited about the possibilities of technology to transform the learning environment for the intellectually impaired.
“I think it’s been an eye-opener to see what technology can do for the children. Even in poor environments, they are exposed to television and cellphones. I think it can certainly help to play a role in creating excitement and involvement in the classroom environment,” says Batchelor.
As Louw points out, the mentally impaired learn by a process that is much different from that of normally developing people. Their learning must be immediate and spontaneous. A differently abled child must practice even minor tasks before they can do them well. They have difficulty reading, but have a huge appreciation for storytelling. That’s why the success of teaching the intellectually impaired is so strongly reliant on the ability and compassion of the teacher.
So far, she says, the children have been fascinated by the technology. The smart white board allows you to actually interact with what is on the board at any time – by touching the screen, you can link objects, or highlight them, or make them produce a sound. They can write their names on the board and save them on the computer. Suddenly, they are empowered.
This is critical in a context where the intellectually impaired have traditionally been given sheltered employment doing poorly-paid, mundane tasks. This has only isolated these people even further from society. At the Don Mattera School, the focus has been on teaching skills that can be used in broader society, like hairdressing and beadwork, and Batchelor believes that technology will be able to broaden their horizons even further.
“By using technology to aid in the delivery of a new teaching and learning model, we should allow intellectually impaired children to be more self directed and more self paced in the way that they get their education,” says Batchelor. “If we can teach them to bake cakes, work in gardens, drive cars and operate ATMs, you’re breaking down the barriers that have excluded them so cruelly from the mainstream.”
Tapala says the introduction of computers has not only created new possibilities for learning, but the functioning and administration of the school has improved significantly through the simple use of computerised records and online teaching materials. Ultimately, each teacher will have access to a computer, through which they will be able to track their young charges’ progress and prepare 21st century learning materials.
Reza Bardien, the academic programmes manager at Microsoft, admits to having a soft spot for the Don Mattera school.
“We want to show how technology can help children who are differently abled to reveal their needs and dreams. We want to remove the barriers of perceptions and resources that prevent technology from being used in special schools,” says Bardien.
So far, so good, says Batchelor. The training of teachers on the new technology is well under way, and the children are responding extremely well to the parts of the curriculum that have been adapted for use on the PCs and whiteboard. But it doesn’t stop there: ultimately it’s not just a schools computer programme, but a community programme that empowers parents and the surrounding community as well.
For now, though, it’s a voyage of discovery for the teachers and children of the Don Mattera school alike. Hopefully, says Bardien, the growing use of technology will help them to create educational, employment, and social opportunities for differently abled young people through computer access, increased computer literacy, and technology skills development. Then, he says, technology will have done its work.
Rural school uses technology to get ahead
A state school in the heart of the rural Eastern Cape province is showing its big-city cousins across the country how to save energy, reduce carbon emissions and improve the quality of learning through the use of technology.
One of the first schools in South Africa to achieve eco-school status, the Byletts Combined School in rural Cintsa village, near East London, is at the heart of a rural computing initiative which has seen it undertake a number of projects related to energy consumption and environmental education.
By calculating the energy consumption of ICTs in the school and the impact these have on the environment, Byletts pupils have planted enough indigenous trees to make the school lab totally carbon-neutral, while still accessing the modern technologies that will equip these rural learners with the skills to cope in the modern world of business.
In 2006, the Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa (WESSA) launched the Eskom Energy and Sustainability programme at Byletts. The programme was a resounding success on many levels, says Phillip Wilkinson from Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa.
Yolanda Peters, ICT facilitator at Byletts, said the project not only encouraged cross-curricular teaching, engaged teachers from different learning areas and addressed the issues of carbon emissions and climate change.
“It also provided the impetus to integrate the school’s Dell Foundation and Microsoft-sponsored computer laboratory across learning areas, including natural sciences and mathematics. This ‘real-world’ learning has been extremely valuable,” said Ms Peters.
The project kicked off by having learners audit the amount of electricity used by the school over a typical week, and using this information to calculate the environmental impact their ICT programmes were having and the additional costs to the school.
They could then forecast how much electricity the computer lab was using over the course of a ‘typical’ year. Based on these figures, learners were able to calculate the amount of carbon emissions the school lab was responsible for, what impact the lab had on the electricity bill and how much carbon they would need to mitigate.
To bring the learning programme into technology lessons, a ‘Carbon Calculator’ audit programme was developed in Microsoft Excel that allowed learners to input their audit findings directly into their computers. This tool was then used to make all relevant calculations and projections.
Having worked out their carbon emission levels, the learners then planted enough indigenous trees on the school grounds to ‘soak up’ the carbon produced in the course of a typical school year.
Ms Peters will also be presenting this innovative project at the African regional Microsoft Innovative Teachers Awards in Accra, Ghana from 27-28 May 2008. Bill Gates has invited the winners from the regional forums to the Microsoft campus in Redmond in June 2008 to see the latest in classroom technology, talk with those involved in developing resources for teachers and schools and share their experience and expertise with Microsoft.
In 2006 the school received support from Microsoft through the company’s Partners in Learning programme. Last year, this programme saw the school receive further support in the form of teacher capacity-building and courses addressing the integration of technology into schools.
The school is also the proud recipient of a brand-new computer lab, thanks to multinational computer manufacturer Dell and Microsoft. The lab is sure to be put to full use: Byletts plans to contribute even further to the development of employability skills by deploying Microsoft’s Digital Literacy Curriculum, and has plans to offer the internationally certified MS IT Academy programme within the next year.
“As we become an increasingly connected society, integrating technology into education is a crucial component of the future for rural communities and their economies,” said Microsoft SA’s Reza Bardien. “Many more affluent schools can learn from the way that Byletts uses technology to enable its learners to participate and compete in today’s growing digital economy in an environmentally responsible way.”
Computer literacy opens new doors for student
When part-time student Carlyn Abrahams started her marketing studies three years ago, it never occurred to her to become computer literate. The cost was high: apart from having to write her assignments by hand, she was limited to low-level casual jobs. Then she started a computer course – and she’s never looked back.
Today, Abrahams is working as an assistant manager at a Durban hardware store while she finishes her IMM diploma. She is comfortably paying for her own studies, and is looking forward to a successful career in marketing when she completes her studies.
She says the secret to her success is simple: a Microsoft Unlimited Potential course at the St Philomena’s IT Resource and Learning Centre in Westville. UP is a global program focused on improving lifelong learning for young people and adults by providing technology skills through community-based technology learning centres (CTLCs).
Many of the UP courses are designed to meet the needs of people learning to use Microsoft Office applications or the Microsoft Windows XP operating system in a community learning environment.
“I cannot believe the difference this has made in my life!” says Abrahams. “Before doing the course, I could only pick up casual work doing promotions because I was not computer-literate. Now I study far more effectively, and I have a full-time job that pays me well.”
St Philomena’s instructor Alphonse Rutayisire has been teaching technology skills to people from disadvantaged backgrounds for the past 10 years. He says that in today's knowledge-based economy, computer literacy has become a vital workplace skill - a skill that millions of people still lack.
“Access to technology is only part of the answer,” says Rutayisire. “It is equally critical to provide IT skills training, tools, and guidance. This is critical to create opportunities that can change lives, transform communities, and strengthen local economies. Our mission is to support social inclusion through digital inclusion, using IT to transform and develop low-income communities.”
Abrahams has since purchased her own computer. “I’m sure I’ll achieve all my dreams because I know what I’m capable of,” she says. “Now I have only to think about my present and my future and be positive that everything will work out for me.”
Rutayisire says IT training is critical to help the disadvantaged gain the skills needed to compete successfully for jobs in today’s workplace.
“More than ever before, adults need to reinvent themselves many times over to keep up with the larger changes in the modern world,” said Rutayisire. “Each UP course is designed to teach technology skills, but always with an eye toward the use of technology to enhance individual opportunities, productivity, job readiness, and quality of life.”
Technology gives young mother new hope
Four years ago, Durban mother Sheila Watson was working as a cleaner to support her two young children. Today, having completed her ICDL (International Computer Drivers’ Licence) qualification at a Microsoft-backed digital village, she is on the brink of breaking into a newfound career.
Watson is the latest graduate of the St Philomena’s IT Resource and Learning Centre in Westville, where Rwandan exile Alphonse Rutayisire has been teaching technology skills to people from disadvantaged backgrounds for the past 10 years.
“I walked in and decided to enrol in the basic computer course. That decision literally changed my life, because I realised I wanted more knowledge about computers,” says Sheila.
The IDCL is a 112-hour long course that teaches competency in a range of office productivity programs as part of Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential curriculum. UP is a global program focused on improving lifelong learning for young people and adults by providing technology skills through community-based technology learning centres (CTLCs).
Many of the UP courses are designed to meet the needs of people learning to use Microsoft Office applications or the Microsoft Windows XP operating system in a community learning environment.
“At first I thought I could never make it,” says Watson. “I had never used a computer before. I had a job with long hours and two small children, so I had very little time. Now that this miracle has happened, I look forward to a good career.”
Rutayisire says IT training is critical to help the disadvantaged gain the skills needed to compete successfully for jobs in today’s workplace.
“More than ever before, adults need to reinvent themselves many times over to keep up with the larger changes in the modern world,” said Rutayisire. “Each UP course is designed to teach technology skills, but always with an eye toward the use of technology to enhance individual opportunities, productivity, job readiness, and quality of life.”
Junior Software Developer project helps bridge the digital divide
Educators and learners in more than 50 schools in rural Mpumalanga are benefiting from an innovative community-based learning programme, the Puma Scope project, which sees students from disadvantaged communities receive ICT - training towards preparing them for tertiary studies.
Through Partners in Learning, Microsoft is leveraging the transformative power of software to create innovative educational experiences that remove limitations, create opportunities, and bring students and teachers closer.
The Microsoft Junior Developer training was included in the Puma Scope project in January 2008, which is run by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria in collaboration with the Mpumalanga Department of Education
Project coordinator Prof Hein Venter from the University of Pretoria says the project has provided a platform for rolling out Microsoft .Net software development training.
The Microsoft Junior Developer training project is now allowing the rural youth to have a taste of software development, thereby seeding the local software economy,” says Prof Venter.
“One of the biggest challenges these schools face is that they are situated in rural areas, where electricity supply is very unstable. The fact these schools are also previously disadvantaged adds to the challenge of bridging the educational gaps that the educators in such schools are experiencing.”
The training is conducted on Microsoft software under the Microsoft Academic Alliance Programme and the Microsoft Partners in Learning Programme
Reza Bardien, Academic Programme Manager at Microsoft South Africa, says that providing access to software development tools and skills to previously disadvantaged schools and communities needs to be encouraged toward the vision of South Africa one day exporting more technology than it imports. We will continue to support innovation in education with big, bold goals as we strive to jointly build a vibrant local software ecosystem.
“We need to harness the full potential of our youth to fully exploit the information society. As the global economy becomes increasingly reliant on technology, software development skills allow the youth to effectively participate in the competitive labour market,” said Bardien.
After the schools are identified by the Mpumulanga Department of Education, two second-year Computer Science students are assigned to each school. After being trained to teach the Partners in Learning Teacher Training Model, the students work at the rural schools for two weeks during university holidays under the guidance and monitoring of the project co-ordinator Prof Venter, who literally drives from school to school to check on the progress.
Technology offers opportunities for rural students
Students in the remote village of Rotterdam, near Tzaneen in the Limpopo Province, have discovered that the world is a small place when you have access to the internet, thanks to the vision of teacher Victor Ngobeni.
Ngobeni, a geography teacher and deputy principal at the Rotterdam High School, was recently honoured as one of the world’s most innovative teachers for his efforts to use technology to change the lives of his learners. He was among 260 teachers from 40 countries honoured at the Worldwide Microsoft Innovative Teachers Forum in Helsinki, Finland, in October 2007.
Ngobeni’s approach was simple: “We may be an isolated village that is not exposed to urban things, but with access to the internet, we belong to the global village,” he said.
He started by taking his students on a field trip to the town of Tzaneen, some 100km away, to experience a taste of urban life. Using their experiences, they wrote a series of essays and poems about the pressures of urban life. They also developed advertisements for local businesses, such as a driving school, a dry cleaner and a poultry project, and sold these advertisements back to the business owners.
An English teacher helped the students with their essays and a business economics teacher helped assess their advertisements.
Back at the school’s basic computer laboratory, Ngobeni got his students to link up with two schools in the US – the John Muir High School in California and Henry Senachwine High School in Illinois – to exchange information about their lives and learn about other cultures.
“Teachers sometimes tend to adhere to a strict textbook-based structure, and often forget to help their learners experience what the outside world is like,” said Ngobeni. “I am motivated by the fact that my students do not have all of the opportunities that urban life has to offer. My responsibility is to try to expose them to these opportunities, while making their learning fun.”
Ngobeni’s achievements are all the more noteworthy when one considers that he only used a computer for the first time in 2002.
The response by the students has been outstanding, says Ngobeni. “They did things I never thought they were capable of. They seemed to enjoy working on the internet, and soon started discovering things by themselves. At times we worked in the computer lab until six in the evening and very rarely would you here learners complain about going home. This shows that they enjoyed what they were doing.”
Cynthia Maluleke, one of Ngobeni’s Grade 11 learners, said the programme had been “extremely useful”. “When we go to college or university, we will be expected to be computer literate and to be able to use the internet. This project has opened our eyes to the outside world, and has helped us a lot.”
Technology ‘opens doors for the blind’
Michael Park works every day to help people who are blind develop computer skills that will help them make their way in the world. It's a challenging job for which he's infinitely qualified: Park, a lawyer and IT instructor, has been blind since birth.
And that's the driving force behind his desire to help others. Most blind and visually impaired South Africans battle to find employment and to afford the technology that will help them communicate better with the sighted world, and Park is passionate about making computer technology available as broadly and as cheaply as possible.
“As far as technology is concerned, the blind community in this country still lives in the dark middle ages,” says Park. Part of the problem is cost: generally, it costs a blind person three times more than their sighted counterpart to get up and running with a computer system, if you add the R10 000 cost of a screen reader and other assistive technology (AT) aids.
Organizations such as the World Health Organization and the World Blind Union estimate that more than 160 million people throughout the world are either blind or have a significant impairment to their vision. This number does not even begin to address the additional hundreds of millions of people with physical, developmental, or learning disabilities who can benefit from the rich applications of AT.
Park, who lives and works in Pietermaritzburg, is a strong proponent of AT, and uses it every day. Although entirely self-taught, his work includes assisting people who are blind to use computers and AT. His own computer runs Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003 along with a variety of AT products, including JAWS for Windows, a screen reader.
“As I became more proficient, I began thinking of ways of helping other blind people to use AT to help them get jobs and communicate freely,” says Park. “It is the only way we can productively use a computer. By learning the keyboard shortcuts of Windows, and the correct screen reader keystrokes, a person with low vision or blindness can use a computer even more efficiently than many sighted counterparts.”
Park is enthusiastic about the compatibility strides made by Microsoft and assistive technology manufacturers recently. But he believes more can be done to make computing affordable to the blind, which is why he is experimenting with free and open-source based technology – like NVDA (Non-Visible Desktop Access), a screen reader which can be downloaded to a memory stick and used on any computer without installing any software on the host machine.
NVDA works fairly well with Skype, and Park is experimenting to see how well it works with Windows Live Messenger. He is also experimenting with online word processing, like Office Live Workspaces, which have the potential to give other blind people access to word processing facilities.
“Windows and Office are important productivity tools. When I begin to train new clients with screen reading programs and Windows, they often have no prior computer exposure or knowledge. After a short time, they begin sending email messages and working with other applications. These skills open many doors that were previously closed to them,” says Park.
The one piece of technology he cannot live without is his memory stick, which contains all of his settings for his frequently used applications and several applications which run directly from the memory stick. And that’s his challenge to software vendors and AT manufacturers: create more productivity software which can run directly from a flash drive. This, he believes, will open doors for many blind people.
“USB memory stick software is the future of computing for the blind,” says Park. “If I could take my Microsoft Office, with all of my fonts and mail and browser settings, in my pocket wherever I go, this would be immensely liberating and empowering. But the trick with memory stick software is that it must not install: it must run independently off the stick itself.”
Employers are often keen to employ blind people, but they are reluctant to incur the costs of specially equipped computers. “If I could say to a prospective employer that I have my own memory stick with my own screen reader, and you just sit me down at a computer, I will be far more likely to get work,” says Park.
“If potential employers are made aware of AT and its uses, it is more likely that their fears about hiring people with disabilities will be replaced with appreciation for its benefits - to employers as well as people with disabilities.”
Microsoft SA’s Colin Erasmus says accessibility is about making computers so adaptable that anyone can use them. “We focus on improving computing for people with disabilities because, by surmounting those accessibility hurdles, the result is technology that works better for everyone,” says Erasmus. “In our information age, access to information is a fundamental human right.”
One of Microsoft’s most recent initiatives in this regard was the launch earlier this year of software that will make it easier for anyone to create documents and content that will be accessible for blind and print-disabled individuals. The ‘Save as DAISY XML’ add-in for Microsoft Office Word helps bridge the divide for those with print disabilities, and enables blind and visually impaired users to save text files created in Word into DAISY, an accessibility format.
Hiroshi Kawamura, president of the DAISY Consortium, said the initiative to put ‘Save as DAISY XML’ in Microsoft Word was the first step to bring fully accessible content to people who are blind or print disabled throughout the world. “We know that 70 percent of all information is created with Microsoft Word; this new plug-in provides an unprecedented leap forward in the world wide effort to make information available to all,” said Kawamura.
Historically, individuals with these disabilities have accessed information using assistive technologies such as screen magnifiers, large print, refreshable Braille, text-to-speech technology and other tools to attempt to manipulate document formats.
However, because these people cannot visually navigate complex page layouts, they often struggle to keep up with the demands of today’s information-rich society.
“This new ‘Save as DAISY XML’ functionality for Microsoft Word has the potential to break down barriers for millions of visually impaired individuals and enhance the experience for virtually anyone who loves to read,” said Erasmus. “This tool will make it easier for anyone - from a child writing to his or her grandparent, to a government agency providing vital information to its citizens - to create accessible content.”
The add-in can be downloaded by Microsoft Office Word users for free at http://www.openxmlcommunity.org/daisy. Also available is the next version of the DAISY Pipeline – a free download that enables users to seamlessly convert their DAISY XML files into the DAISY talking book format. Download the DAISY Pipeline at http://www.TBD.com
Technology centre gives KZN’s disabled new hope
A newly-opened technology centre for the disabled in Pinetown is giving people living with disabilities and mobility impairments the chance to learn skills and find employment – and it aims to find jobs for some 60 disabled people by the end of the year.
The Rod Collenbrander Resource Centre in Ashley, Pinetown, will offer free computer literacy courses and employment solutions to disabled persons residing in KwaZulu-Natal. A joint venture between the QuadPara Association of South Africa (QASA) and software maker Microsoft, the centre started training its first intake of students in May.
Sarah Briggs, QASA’s program manager, says the aim of the centre is to help meet the needs of persons with disabilities to develop skills and find employment as a stepping stone to being able to live entirely independently.
“It’s fairly obvious that information technology (IT) is the future for disabled people. It allows you to control so much of your own life and is more empowering than any wheelchair or walking stick. It has absolutely opened the door for hundreds of disabled South Africans who have had to battle various forms of discrimination, including education and social, over the course of their lives,” says Briggs.
Eight physically disabled candidates at a time now attend daily classes in basic computer literacy. They are trained by Dean Murray, himself a quadriplegic, who spent the first part of the year being mentored in computer training skills and techniques to deliver the computer training.
“These courses have not only given me computer skills, but the confidence to do all sorts of new things,” said Murray. “It’s fantastic to have the opportunity to help others that, like me, are also disabled but have not had the chance to free themselves from the shackles that society’s attitudes to their disabilities have imposed on them.”
The centre uses Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential curriculum, which aligns with internationally recognized certification requirements and provides eight step-by-step courses in computer literacy, information literacy, and productivity applications. When disabled students have finished their coursework, QASA attempts to help place them in jobs in both the public and private sector. The centre aims to find jobs for 60 people with disabilities by the end of 2008.
There are an estimated 5 million people in South Africa living with a disability. With limited access to education and the formal labour market, and in many cases reliant on government’s disability grant of R780 per month, quadriplegics and paraplegics are often left with little choice but to be dependent on family members for a home.
According to the most recent figures from the Department of Labour, less than 1% of people living with disabilities in South Africa are formally employed. QASA estimates that more than 90% of those people live below the poverty line, most without health insurance or prospects.
Microsoft SA’s Citizenship lead, Vis Naidoo, says the company worked closely with QASA to provide much-needed resources and curriculum material to the Rod Collenbrander Resource Centre. In addition to providing adaptive technology, the centre offers free training in basic computing, along with courses in specific applications.
“Today, millions of the South Africans lack the access and, more importantly, the skills they need to participate in the new information-based global economy. We’re determined to dramatically improve those statistics and to help people realize their full potential—one person at a time,” said Naidoo. “Through innovative technologies and partnerships, we are working to broaden digital inclusion and to bring the benefits of technology and technology skills to as many South Africans as we can.”
