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ICT SERVICES FOR DISADVANTAGED/DISABLED
The Digital Information Research Foundation (DIRF) has been involved in enabling the disadvantaged or disabled to get integrated in the main stream of life. We believe in the concept, "The disable are not really disabled but "differentially abled".
The DIRF has conducted workshops and training programmes for disabled students at different institutions in Chennai. The main centre for the ICT for Disadvantaged programme is the St. Louis Institute for the Deaf and Blind & College for the Deaf located at Chennai. It is a reputed institution for deaf and blind and has been functioning since 1962.
The disabled students possess a kind of talent, which others do not have. The hidden potential needs to be exploited for the benefits of them and for the society. This is evident from our programmes at institutes for deaf.
Insofar, many sections of the society are oriented to ICT. However the major section that is left is the disabled. This inequality needs attention. We intend to present and highlight the disadvantaged and our experience on teaching ICT is rewarding.
The interesting experience is the email exploitation for disabled users. While teaching we are encountered with so many questions on email usage. There is a query, for example, "Why people create email spams?" When we continue our service to the disabled students through email transfer we are overwhelmed with satisfaction and happiness. As these students do not have Internet access the general mail is send to the school and the collective responses from the students are transferred to us. Currently we are analyzing the feedback and responses so that we hope to gain more understanding of the potential of ICT for disabled.
 Future Plan: Our immediate plan is to create a portal for disabled; the portal will serve the needs of disabled.
The portal will collect all the needed information to the disabled particularly to the deaf that would sever as a tool for self learning and help to make the disabled people independent and self supportive. The integrated approach will be employed and we would like to create a regional network of disable people particularly the deaf students.
This site will be updated soon.
For further information please call us at service@dirf.org
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