A computer training centre for visually challenged students was inaugurated in the city on Monday.

This computer training institute was established by the Milton Charitable Foundation with assistance from the Ganjam district administration. Its inauguration coincided with the birth anniversary of Louis Braille. The inauguration ceremony was attended by the Ganjam district Collector, V.K.Pandian, Berhampur Sub-Collector, Ajit Mishra, Gopalpur MLA Pradeep Panigrahy etc.

Three-month courses

This institute would start three-month-long computer courses for the blind students. The strength of each batch would be 10 students. During the summer vacations a two month long intensive course would also be taken up, said the president of the Foundation, Gopal Rao Dora. The students of the course would learn computer skill through the Job Access With Speech (JAWS) software. It may be noted that a residential school for blind girls in the city run by the Orissa Service Centre for the Blind is providing computer training to its students through this software. But the institute inaugurated on Monday is the first such centre in south Orissa.

The Collector said the Red Cross Society had provided financial assistance for the procurement of three computers of the new institute.

According to the computer instructor of the institute Harsha Ratha, the JAWS software runs in the background when a blind person uses a computer. This software reads the screen and cursor positions during operation of a computer. It provides verbal assistance for all functions for a blind person. This voice facility would senable the visually impaired to use

Internet to gain knowledge. But till date we do not have similar software which runs on Indian language. So, the visually impaired computer learners would also have to improve their verbal English language skill to use the ‘JAWS’ software which uses English in western accent.