Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

A guest Beneblog by Viji Dilip International Bookshare Program Manager Every morning braving the heavy Chennai traffic Maria wheels into Worth Trust to start her work as a proof reader. Maria was raised by the sisters of the local Chennai Church, given a basic education and was sent off to Worth Trust to learn life skills. Two years later, Maria who was affected by polio at the age of one and has to use a wheel chair and calipers, is now soon to be married on Jan 18th, 2010. The proud bride to be is full of smiles and happy that the Worth Trust- Bookshare partnership has given a new meaning to her life, she is full of confidence ready to face the world. She says, “This job has greatly increased my self-esteem. I now feel even I can help people living in America!!” Thanks to a generous grant from the Lavelle Fund for the Blind, Bookshare has been able to work with Worth Trust, a nonprofit with offices in Chennai, India. The project's goals were to work with organizations that prov...

We have a partnership with the Worth Trust in Chennai, India, to do data entry for Bookshare.org, funded by the Lavelle Fund. I blogged about it in May: Scanning in Tamil Nadu . Our international Bookshare.org manager, Viji Dilip, recently wrote about making a change in what kind of capital equipment to get Worth Trust to help carry out their work: Strange as it may sound I grew up with hearing this often, "Everyone please save all your files now as the current will be going off in the next five minutes." OK, there were no computers when I was growing up in India but the current going "off" was very common. Sometimes for an hour or two and in summer for several hours at a stretch when the Electricity Board scheduled power cuts for every city . These power cuts could last from anywhere from an hour to three hours in the afternoon depending on when the supervisor at the EB came back from lunch. "There was no current" was our equivalent of "The dog a...

This is a guest blog from Anna Reid, an Amherst student who interned with Bookshare.org International this past summer. I received a copy of her reflections and asked if I could share it with more people. Thanks to Anna for saying yes, and for sharing her experiences! Reflections on an internship with Bookshare.org in Chennai, India Made possible through support from the Amherst College Center for Community Engagement Anna Reid, religion major, class of 2010 Anna Reid with employees of Worth Trust, a South Indian organization that provides vocational training and employment for people with disabilities. Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that all people deserve "the right to seek, receive and impart information." Today, millions of people are denied this basic human right because they are not literate. A related, but slightly different and less recognized issue, is the fact that people with disabilities such as blindness often have ...

After visiting the Chennai operation of Worth Trust, Viji and I journeyed to Katpadi, the town where Worth Trust is headquartered. Around the town are quite a number of Worth Trust enterprises. One of the enterprises we stopped by made the hand-tricycles I saw all over the region. For a person without high functioning legs, a wheelchair is not that practical in the community. Instead, there were a lot of tricycles with the crank mounted where it can be turned by hand. Worth Trust makes and sells these accessible tricycles. Another part of the operations turns out to be the assembly arm of the famous Perkins Brailler: a manual Braille typewriter still in wide use. Viji stopped to chat with one of the women on the assembly line. Most of the employees of Worth Trust are people with disabilities. We met many of the employees, including deaf workers, blind workers and workers with physical disabilities. The guy pictured above is a blind machinist. I also got to try out a powered wheelc...