Click following link to see a video of Dushyantha demonstrating how he uses his laptop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB6Bi5suplY-A&rel=0

More often than not, when I’ve been introduced to somebody who visits Abimansala-Anuradhapura, the following chunk of words is often used by the commandant- Lt. Col. Kanishka Bandara. “This is Major Dushyantha Yapa, our special education officer; he is totally blind but uses the computer very well”. Subsequent to that, a query is regularly raised by most of them asking how do I use computer and each time I have to explain it from the beginning too.

Therefore I am posting this article to give basic information about how we as blind people use computers, and how computers can dramatically improve our quality of life as well.

Several companies today market computer programs that allow a blind person to use a standard computer. These computer programs are called “screen readers”. The screen reader that I am now using is “Jaws” it is the most popular screen reader” among blind but I learned the computer basics by using “Hal”. Those are commercial software’s but there are few companies that developed free screen readers such as “Thunder” and “NVDA”. Microsoft Windows operating system itself has a basic built in screen reader it is “Narrator”.

A screen reader is itself a standard Windows computer application, but its job is to run alongside the other programs running on a computer and “tell” the blind person what is on the screen. Because a blind person cannot see what is on the screen, a screen reader typically has a built-in speech synthesiser which, although perhaps sounding a bit like a robot, speaks information to the user through the normal sound speakers of the computer itself.

People with some limited sight typically use a different kind of screen reader which magnifies and enhances the image on the screen to make it easier to see, and some people use both speech and magnification at the same time.
But whether a person uses speech or magnification, typically the screen reader is just a computer application.

So how does a blind person actually know what is on the screen?
The screen reader keeps track of what the computer is doing, and speaks or magnifies the necessary information that a user needs in order to use the computer. When you as a sighted person look at the computer screen, of course you see the whole screen, but instinctively you focus your attention on the bit of the screen that is immediately relevant. A screen reader does the same thing. It does not simply read the whole screen, because that would quickly become tedious. But it monitors the screen and automatically tells the blind user the most important information about what is currently happening.

A totally blind person, someone with no sight at all to read the screen, cannot use a mouse. Most functions on the computer can be operated from the keyboard, though this does vary with different programs, and a totally blind person learns how to access the needed functions by using the keyboard. But in some cases, a good screen reader can even make functions accessible with special keyboard combinations when typically those functions might only be available with the mouse.

But how can a blind person use the keyboard?
A good typist or keyboard operator does not need to see their fingers on the keyboard. So blind people can easily learn to use the keyboard, and indeed using a keyboard (touch-typing) is a fundamental skill for many of us. Confidence with the keyboard is essential, though that does not mean a person needs also to be a fast typist.

So most blind people use everyday computer applications such as Word, Internet Explorer and Outlook, and actually can do most of the tasks sighted people can.

What can blind and vision impaired people do using a computer?
Blind and vision impaired people do many different things in life, so there is almost no limit to the range of tasks we can do on a computer. It would be impossible to list them all, but here is a list of things that we typically can do using a computer:
Surfing the internet
Reading newspapers, books & magazines on the internet
Internet banking and shopping
Chat rooms and voice communication over the internet
Internet radio stations and entertainment
Looking up information on the internet
Email correspondence
Written correspondence
Personal notes and keeping track of personal information
Essays and other work to do with study
Report writing (for employment, committee work etc.)
Personal or business accounts (spreadsheet or book keeping applications)

So you can see there are many different things we can do using a computer, and mostly these are the same things that sighted people also typically do, For example, internet banking can be easily used by a blind person with only moderate training. So we can read our own bank statements, pay our own bills, and generally keep tabs on our own personal money without assistance from someone else. This means we can be more independent with our personal finances and avoid the vulnerability that sometimes comes from being completely dependent on someone else.

What can blind people not do using a computer?
Typically, a totally blind person cannot do anything that is mainly graphical, or which involves interacting with moving images. Screen readers, particularly those that use synthetic speech, cannot deal with graphical applications such as painting and drawing. Nor can they cope with animated applications such as most games.

Specialised training
So now you have realized that there is a lot that we as blind people can do using a computer, however by now you have probably realized that the way we work with a computer is somewhat different from the typical way a sighted person would use one. Because of this, blind people do need, at least initially, specialized training. Once we become familiar with the basics of Windows and Windows applications, then typically we can learn additional things from sighted trainers.

There are several places in Sri Lanka that provide computer training for blind. All blind schools, counsel for the blind- Colombo, Sri Lanka federation of visually handicap, employees federation- Colombo, Ranaviru Sevana and Abimansala for blinded soldiers are some of those places.

Based on my experiences, most of Sri Lankan blind persons have not been able to reap the benefits of this technology due to the deficiency in English language. So that, , university of Colombo has developed a Sinhala TTS (Text to speech) and Sri Lanka counsel for the blind also has initiated another such project with the support of SLIT-Malabe to develop the “Nuwana” software.
So with the help of those software’s, Sinhala speaking blind community can work with MS word, MS excel and also reed some Sinhala newspapers and websites that are published with Sinhala Unicode fonts.
I myself being a totally blind person, on behalf of Sri Lankan blind community would like to make a humble request from all web publishers who publish Sinhala content to make their websites accessible by complying with Unicode standards.