mangalore today
name
name
name
Thursday, March 28
Genesis Engineersnamename

 

Round Table - Ladies Circle Donate JAWS PRO Software to Roman & Catherine Lobo School for the Blind

Round Table - Ladies Circle Donate JAWS PRO Software to Roman & Catherine Lobo School for the Blind


Mangalore Today News Network

Mangalore, March 31, 2011: Mangalore Coastal Round Table 190 and Mangalore Ladies Circle 82 have donated ‘JAWS PRO’, an interactive software for the use of blind children of Roman & Catherine Lobo School for the Blind. The software was commissioned on Wednesday, 30th March, 2011 at the school’s premises at Kotekani Road, Urva Chilimbi during a short program held in the morning. The program was attended by the Round Table and Ladies Circle members, Sponsors and Trustees.

 

Jaws Software 1

 

Jaws Software 2

 

Jaws Software 3

 

Dr. U. V. Shenoy, the eminent pediatrician and professor at the Department of Pediatrics, Kasturba Medical College was the chief guest. Dr. Shenoy is also a trustee of Seva Bharathi, a registered trust which is managing the blind school. He received the software from Preethi Pinto, Chairperson of Mangalore Ladies Circle 82 and Arjun Pinto, Chairperson of Mangalore Coastal Round Table 190.

The formal handing over ceremony was followed by a brief demonstration of the software by Callistus D’sa, the principal of the blind school. He explained the features of the software to the guests present. The students of the school operated the newly installed software and showed how it works.

JAWS Pro Talking Software serves the purpose of converting a normal PC into a Talking PC to enable the blind to operate the computers independently. The voice over of the text seen on the computer screen allows the blind person to feed new data or access existing data, including via Internet / e-mail. It is also useful in training blind persons to learn how to use the computer.

This powerful screen reading software is available in bilingual edition – English and Hindi languages – and offers a very high level of accessibility and efficiency to the blind persons for access to MS Windows applications and the Internet and reading of web pages. Special features like place markers, custom labels enable them to even bookmark the web pages of interest so that they can easily directly go to that link the next time.


The entire software package donated at a cost of Rs 1,03,400/- included:
* MAGic Screen Magnification Software which provides the facilities of not only magnifying the text from 1.1x to 36x but also offers a number of enhancement tools to support visibility by persons with Low Vision.

* Openbook Scanning & Reading Software which converts the computer and scanner combination into a scanning and reading machine to enable the blind and low vision students to scan and read printed books independently. Has a choice of voices including the Indian accent voice.

* Sangeeta which, converts scanned text to audio files, connects to Braille displays, enables sending of E-mails, magnifies text with many visibility enhancement tools for easy viewing for low visions students.

* Talking Typing Teacher Pro – a talking typing tutorials specially designed for the blind with complete guidance and practice lessons for learning keyboarding skills and developing typing speed in a systematic manner, using all ten fingers like a touch typist. Since the program also has a complete display of all lessons, even the low vision students can read and learn to type.Bonita Portable Mouse Magnifier for reading of books for low vision persons.

Mangalore Coastal Round Table 190 and Mangalore Ladies Circle 82 have donated this software as part of their mission ‘Freedom Through Education”. Through this software, they are enabling these special kids to enjoy the freedom to work on a computer at their work places, said Preethi Pinto, Chairperson of Mangalore Ladies Circle 82.

For this purpose the two clubs had organized “Guiding Stars”, a treasure hunt with the Visually Challenged.  This unique fundraiser event was a first of its kind to be held in Mangalore and it took place on the 14th of November, 2010. In this event the clues were provided in Braille script and each team had to compulsorily have a blind navigator to decipher the clues. 35 teams had participated in the treasure hunt with 120 participants. The surplus funds raised from sponsors for this event helped in procuring the JAWS software, she said.

Roman & Catherine Lobo School for the Blind was established through the generosity of its expatriate sponsor, Carmine Lobo, who named it after her parents. Since 2009, the has been managed by Seva Bharati, a non-profit charitable society, which also runs the Chethana School for Disabled Children and has several community outreach programmes aimed at benefiting people belonging to the underprivileged sections of society. 

Dr. Shanti Menezes was the MC of the function.


Write Comment | E-Mail | Facebook | Twitter | Print
Error:NULL
Write your Comments on this Article
Your Name
Native Place / Place of Residence
Your E-mail
Your Comment
You have characters left.
Security Validation
Enter the characters in the image above