Telecentre for Disabilities

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Comment by Nabil Eid on September 2, 2009 at 11:15am

The Computer Training Centre CTC in Damascus / Syria
The center trained and interested in persons with disabilities through ICT and ICDL training curricula.
Kenda Khoury director of CTC, she write a brief story about Hussam Ghanem in Arabic Telecentre website
She Says, the student Hussam Ghanem outstanding student at the Computer Training Center, he suffered from poor muscles, poor absorption and other disabilities, Hussam has finished successfully examinations of the seven module in International Computer Driving License
and he got ICDL certificate, he is now ready to work from his home such as printing or accounting or business promising seminars.
Hussam can depend on himself and achieve financial independence
Hussam work to live a decent life.

The picture shows Hussam during the training session

Comment by Nabil Eid on July 29, 2009 at 12:51pm

INCLUSION INTERNATIONAL’S MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS:
VISION AND TARGETS FOR 2015
1. Eradicate Extreme Poverty For People with Disabilities and their Families:
By 2015, people with intellectual disabilities and their families will live free of poverty and discrimination

2. Achieve Inclusive Education:
By 2015, all children with intellectual disabilities will receive good quality, inclusive education with appropriate supports to ensure that each child reaches their highest potential

3. Promote Gender Equality for Women with Disabilities:
By 2015, social, economic and political discrimination against women and girls who have a disability and their mothers will be eradicated

4. Reduce the Mortality of Children with Disabilities:
By 2015, the mortality rate of children who are born with a disability or become disabled in the early years will be reduced by two-thirds

5. Achieve the Rights of Children and Families:
By 2015, the rights of children with disabilities, as outline in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, will be respected; mothers will receive adequate pre- and post-natal health care to ensure the well being and healthy development of all children; families will get the help they need for the care and support of their member with a disability

6. Combat HIV/AIDS:
By 2015, the spread of HIV/AIDS in the community of people who have a disability will begin to be reversed and children with disabilities who have been orphaned will be supported and cared for in the community

7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability:
By 2020, achieve significant improvement in the lives of people who have an intellectual disability and their families who live in extreme poverty

8. Develop a Global Partnership for Development:
By 2015, global efforts to promote good governance and global partnerships will contribute to the human rights of people with intellectual disabilities, including citizenship and economic rights

Comment by Belayet Hossain on April 8, 2009 at 4:39am

ICT training for Visually Impaired Student of Dhaka University

With a view to introducing Information Communication Technology (ICT) to the Visually Impaired student and staff in University of Dhaka a three month long training programme has been organized at Resource Centre of Central Library, Dhaka University from 2nd November 2008. The training programme has been initiated by Sightsavers International a UK based International organization along with Dhaka University Central Library. The training programme has been initiated by Sightsavers International a UK based International organization along with Dhaka University Central Library. The training was conducted by Sightsaver's partner YPSA. YPSA has been working for the Visually Impaired persons for the since long with a good reputation in nationally and internationally. Due to the continuous working in ICT section, YPSA has become expert on ICT promotion for visually impaired person.. A total of 36 students from different department (and 4 staff of Central Library have participated in the programme out of which 20 are male and 16 are female.

Information and communication technology (ICT) has become, within a very short time, one of the basic building blocks of modern society. Because, its play an important role for economic and social development. The people of Bangladesh are now getting the benefits of the ICT for their day to day life. But still, we are far behind in the high way of ICT. Especially visually impaired and the people living in the village are deprived of benefits of ICT.

This training programme is one of the major initiatives of ICT activities in our country. The main objective of this training programme is to empower Visually Impaired Student through ICT as well as encouraging them to fight against the forth coming challenging in future. Now a days ICT becomes one of the best solutions to empowering the VI people. Due to unavailability of source and resource, most of the students are deprived of getting the benefits of ICT.

In order to make the training programme a success, YPSA has provided with internationally recognized trainer (Namely Mr. Vashkar Vattacharya trained from Japan, Thailand and India, Md. Rashed Chowdhury, Trained from Japan, Mr. Madob, Ex-trainee of YPSA IRCD and Henry Hebol Roy) training manual and software as well as other facilities. All VI students are divided into three batches in equal number so that the students can get proper training and can have sufficient time for practice. The main component of this programme is to acquaint VI students to Computer Screen reading software, speech synthesizers, self-voicing software, using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint with JAWS (Job Access with Speech), using DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) Talking Book, Visually impairment friendly Electronic Books, Novels, Stories and different Policy and Legislations of Bangladesh. The training is conducted in six days per week from 2:00 PM to 8:00 PM considering the benefits of the students.

It is to be mentioned that Sightsavers International is working significantly to empowering the VI people in Bangladesh for long time. In order to establish a Resource Centre in Central Library of University of Dhaka, Sightsavers has taken several steps for the last few years. At last in 2007, their dream has become reality which is now equipped with computers with necessary software, Plextalk (DAISY Book Reader), Perkins Brailler, Braille Printer, Braille Display and internet facility. With a view to help the VI student for study and operating computer, the authority of Central Library recruited two disable personnel.

This training programme can be the turning stage of the students if they can practice more and imply in their daily life. We expect that more people and organizations will come forward to work for the Visually Impaired persons in our country through which we can go ahead as a developed country.

List of participants Download doc 39 kb
Case Study of Shahanur Haque (Bangla) Download doc 47 kb

Source:http://www.ypsa.org/cms/view.php?id=103

Comment by Nabil Eid on February 26, 2009 at 1:02pm

Solutions for Blind Readers.
Kurzweil 1000 is software program that makes printed or electronic text readily available to people who are blind or visually impaired. It combines accessibility, communication and productivity tools to ease and enhance their reading, writing and learning experience.
The program speaks text aloud in a variety of natural-sounding voices that can be modified to suit individual preferences. In addition, it provides users with document creation and editing as well as study skills capabilities for note taking, summarizing and outlining text.
This program delivers quick access to a wealth of information including online books, magazines and encyclopedias so users can pursue any reading interests. They can also take their reading wherever they go by sending files to Braille note takers and embossers as well as portable devices such as DAISY and MP3 audio players.
Kurzweil 1000 is easy to use for beginners, yet powerful and flexible for advanced users. With its wide array of useful features, users save time and gain independence – whether at home, at school, or at work.
Specification of program:
• Simple Forms Recognition and Completion
this software provides easy access to most printed forms and presents them with the fields, labels, boxes, and text areas in the appropriate reading order. You can fill in the fields, edit, save, and print. You can easily insert your handwritten signature into a form, or any Kurzweil 1000 document, once it's scanned into your computer.
• Choices for More Accurate Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
Two OCR engines, ScanSoft© OCR and ABBYY™ Fine Reader, provide the most accurate available OCR. For the best possible scanning results, Kurzweil 1000 also has the ability to correct many errors. In addition, a noise filter option lets users ignore regions near the edge of a page that were incorrectly identified as text.
• State-of-the-Art Speech Options Clear, natural-sounding Voice Text voices from NeoSpeech and ETI-Eloquence™ voices from Nuance deliver the highest quality text-to-speech (TTS), making reading a pleasure to hear. You can choose and adjust our many voice options to suit your individual preference.
• Appointment Calendar with Audible Reminders
Keep track of your schedule with our easy-to-use calendar application. You can create, add, edit, and delete your calendar entries simply from the desktop taskbar, as well as set audible reminders that will play any sound file on your computer you choose.
• Study Tools
Add bookmarks, text notes, and annotations; skim, summarize, and create outlines for your work, and have your documents open to the last position read. Professionals and students find Kurzweil 1000's comprehensive time-saving study tools extremely useful. Plus, you'll have access to eighteen bilingual dictionaries.
• Quick Access to Scan, Photocopy, and Fax Features
Assign specific Kurzweil 1000 functions to your scanner buttons for faster scanning, copying and faxing. Once configured, pressing a single button will perform the desired task.
• Create Documents and Work with Tables
Writing and editing documents are simple with our audible text editor, built-in dictionaries, thesaurus, and spell checker. In addition, proofreading keystrokes for reading one word at a time include punctuation and capitalization reporting. You can also create, edit, and read tables with the same ease, plus convert blocks of text to tables and vice versa.
• Link Documents and Settings You can link settings to documents, saving you time and effort.
• Online Information Search and Retrieval Enjoy quick access to information from a variety of sources, including e-books, magazines, encyclopedias, and the Merriam-Webster medical dictionary. Based on your criteria, Kurzweil 1000 will search select Internet repositories such as Bookshare.org, NLS Web Braille, AccessWorld, Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom, NFB Publications, the Columbia Encyclopedia and Wikipedia (in multiple languages), and present you with your download choices.
• DAISY Format Support
Kurzweil 1000 opens, reads, edits and saves text-only DAISY files, including original tables, bookmarks, links and notes. You'll also have DAISY Type 2 file support for audible document navigation.
• Read Files Away From Home and Burn CDs
Kurzweil 1000 can send your files to BrailleNote™, BookPort™, Book Courier, Maestro™ and other handheld devices so you can read and reference important material when away from your home or office computer. You can also create CDs of your files within Kurzweil 1000 if you have a CD burner.
• Create and Play Audio Files
It's easy to convert your Kurzweil documents to MP3, WAV and DAISY audio files. If your document contains bookmarks, Kurzweil 1000 will use them to create separate audio files so your selections will be easier to manage on your portable player. In addition, you can listen to audio files from other sources in Kurzweil 1000 along with the option to use Reading and Navigational keys for audio DAISY, and Bookmarks or Notes to annotate MP3, WAV, and WMA files.
• Broad Range of File Access
Any file type that you can print through an application installed on your computer can be opened with Kurzweil 1000 (including PDF), which greatly expands your reading choices.
• Other Notable Features:
o Supports Windows Vista® operating system
o Supports low vision users with magnification and highlighting functions
o Provides easy access to common business applications (Calculator, Photocopier, and Fax)
o Scans within Microsoft Word
o Sends files through popular e-mail applications
Source:
http://www.kurzweiledu.com/

Comment by AHMED SUDAN on February 10, 2009 at 9:45am

dear friends here is collection of links which provide you with many free tutorials ( HTML, java script, CSS, PHP, ASP, CGI) and tools to help you design or build your website. Also you can find special courses like dearmweaver, AutoCAD, ArchiCAD 12

http://openeducation.developmentgateway.org/Open-Educational-Resources.9506.0.html

UNU Open Courseware
United Nations University launches the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal, which offers open access to about a dozen courses developed by three of UNU's Research and Training Centres and Programmes (RTC/Ps) and the Tokyo-based UNU Media Studio. The intent of the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal is to make the course materials used by UNU RTC/Ps available on the web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. The initiative is not meant to replace degree-granting higher education or for-credit courses, but rather to provide content that can be used by educators for curriculum development, by students to augment their current learning resources and by individuals for independent self-study. The topics currently covered include e-governance, economic development and innovation, mangrove biodiversity and integrated watershed management. More courses are in production and in 2008, additional UNU units will participate in this initiative which promotes open sharing and global benefits for self-learn


http://developmentgateway.org/

http://www.distancelearningnet.com/blog/2009/50-free-open-courseware-classes-for-web-designers-perfecting-their-craft/

http://www.smartteaching.org/blog/2008/09/60-open-courseware-collections-to-help-you-be-a-better-teacher/

http://opentraining.unesco-ci.org/cgi-bin/page.cgi?d=1

http://www.freewebknowledge.com/html.php

http://opentraining.unesco-ci.org/cgi-bin/page.cgi?g=Categories%2FAgriculture%2FICT_for_agricultural_and_rural_development%2Findex.html;d=1

http://p31-dev.itcilo.org/delta/LLEL/LifeLongElearning/en/home/

http://www.apc.org/en/node/2733

http://alison.com/login/index.php

Comment by AHMED SUDAN on January 26, 2009 at 11:49pm

http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/01/22/internet-2008-in-numbers/

Internet 2008 in numbers
Posted in Main on January 22nd, 2009 by Pingdom
What happened with the Internet in 2008?
How many websites were added? How many emails were sent? How many blog posts were published? This post will answer those questions and many others with more interesting statistics than you can shake a stick at.
We have used a wide variety of sources from around the Web. A full list of source references is available at the bottom of the post for those interested. In some of the cases we here at Pingdom also did some additional calculations to get even more numbers to play around with.
Email
• 1.3 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 210 billion – The number of emails sent per day in 2008.
• 70% – The percentage of emails that are spam.
• 53.8 trillion – The number of spam emails sent in 2008 (assuming 70% are spam).
Websites
• 186,727,854 – The number of websites on the Internet in December 2008.
• 31.5 million – The number of websites added during 2008.
Web servers
• 24.4% – The growth of Apache websites in 2008.
• 13.7% – The growth of IIS websites in 2008.
• 22.2% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2008.
• 336.8% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2008.
• 100.3% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2008.

Domain names
• 77.5 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2008.
• 11.8 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2008.
• 7.2 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2008.
• 174 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains.
• 19% – The increase in the number of domain names in 2008.
Internet users
• 1,463,632,361 – The number of Internet users worldwide (June 2008).
• 578,538,257 – Internet users in Asia.
• 384,633,765 – Internet users in Europe.
• 248,241,969 – Internet users in North America.
• 139,009,209 – Internet users in Latin America/Caribbean.
• 51,065,630 – Internet users in Africa.
• 41,939,200 – Internet users in the Middle East.
• 20,204,331 – Internet users in Oceania/Australia.

Blogs
• 133 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by Technorati).
• 900,000 – The number of new blog posts in a day.
• 329 million – The number of blog posts in 2008.
Images
• 10 billion – Photos hosted by Facebook (October 2008).
• 3 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (November 2008).
• 6.2 billion – Photos hosted by Photobucket (October 2008).
Videos
• 12.7 billion – The number of online videos watched by American Internet users in a month (November 2008).
• 87 – The number of online videos viewed per month per Internet user in USA.
• 34% – The increase in viewing of online video in USA compared to 2007.
• 3.1 – The number of minutes of an average online video.
Web browsers

Malicious software
• 1 million – The number of computer viruses in April 2008.
• 468% – The increase in malicious code compared to 2007.
Data sources: Website and web server stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet World Stats. Web browser stats from Net Applications. Blog stats from Technorati. Email stats from Radicati Group via About.com. Spam stats from DCC. Virus stats from Symantec via Times Online. Online video stats from Comscore. Photo stats from CNET and Flickr.

Comment by Nabil Eid on January 19, 2009 at 11:21am

Dear Marlene,
Really, I highly appreciate for joining Telecentre for Disabilities group.
Let us work together to benefits persons with disabilities through ICTs, I am sure, the use ICTs for handicapped make a bright individual and independent economic life.
Again, many thanks.
Nabil

Comment by ShaarawyAbdElbaky on January 11, 2009 at 6:58am

Vision and objective
Ofok is dedicated to bring IT literacy to as many people as possible. We are therefore offering basic IT courses from well-known companies such as Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems completely free. That’s right! Students will be taught by an instructor for free, and gain access to the online curriculum for free. Additionally, there will be a discount for exams… And anyone can partake in this endeavor!

How it works
Universities and high schools who wish to partake in this initiative can do so in alliance with the Digital Academy. An Ofok ambassador will head a group of Ofok volunteers – known as a chapter – in each university or high-school. In the high school, the chapter will select a group of students from each year group who will then teach the basics of IT to all the students in their year.

Within the university campus, the chapter will ideally consist of students from the
Faculty of Engineering who have a passion for IT. Within the university, the chapter will select a faculty team leader from each faculty. The faculty team leader will then recruit local faculty members who will act as mentors teaching the basics of IT to all members of his or her faculty.

Ofok will first begin its contribution to ICT for All by offering IT Essentials: PC
Hardware and Software through the Cisco Networking Academy Program and Free Open
Source Softwaren Essentials through the Sun Academic Initiative. All
certificates will be internationally recognized and issued directly from Cisco and Sun.
However it doesn’t stop here – there’s a reward! The chapter to have trained the largest number of people will be awarded free advanced ICT and business courses in Digital Academy. This will be the reward for those who strived hardest in our noble goal to reduce IT literacy in Egypt!

Goal
Knowing the basics of IT is the first and an essential step for any kind of development. Think about it… Information sharing on a wide variety of issues such as famine, disease, health treatments, educational and literacy programs has completely revolutionized our lives. The internet has made life better for everyone – and with technology becoming more advanced and more widespread, the potential for online learning, improved communications and setting up e-businesses will continue to grow. Of course, for all this to happen, it has to start somewhere. Learning computer fundamentals is only just the start, and we at Ofok feel very proud to participate in this endeavor!

Founders
Ofok NGO for Human Development

15 Ofok ambassadors have been selected for this project to promote ICT among young people with the mission to inspire others of their own age to gain ICT training. It encourages the development of young people through giving them the opportunity to fulfill their potential by developing their interpersonal and IT skills.

Road map into the future
As Ofok, our intention is to increase the level of education in Egypt. We plan to provide advanced technology courses by working in close alliance with students and young people by forming community groups. The final aim being… To empower the youth!

Comment by ShaarawyAbdElbaky on January 11, 2009 at 6:57am

http://ohnetwork.ning.com/

Comment by Nabil Eid on January 11, 2009 at 1:44am

Blind girls Pass the ICDL Exam with Arabic Hal Screen Reader
Focus:
Jordanian Girls Pass the ICDL Exam with Arabic Hal Screen Reader
In Amman, Jordan when a group of 16 Jordanian blind girls passed the ICDL exam with two girls achieving higher scores. What made such an event unique is the fact that the blind girls took the Arabic ICDL exam without any sighted help. The girls obtained training in the Saudi Jordanian Institute for the Blind in Amman which qualified them to take the exam. The exam was offered and supervised by the UNESCO’s office in Jordan.
The institute celebrated the success of the 16 blind girls in the presence of H. H. Prince Raed Bin Zaid, H.E. the Minster of Islamic Affairs in Jordan, H. E. the Saudi Ambassador to Jordan as well as representatives of the UNESCO’s office in Amman. Nattiq’s representative in Jordan, Mr. Mohammed Al-Shara, attended the ceremony and received a certificate of appreciation from H. H. Prince Raed Bin Zaid for Nattiq’s role in facilitating the tools required for blind users to take the ICDL exam.
Nattiq invested considerable resources to enable its State-Of-The-Art Arabic screen reader, Hal, access all required ICDL materials and exams. Hal enables blind people to access standard computer systems which opens to them doors of opportunities in pursuing challenging careers and advanced education.
Nattiq rewarded Miss. Hanan Al-Gharagheer and Miss. Rafeeda Al-Jawazmeh with a gift of Talks mobile phone screen reader for achieving the highest two overall scores in the ICDL test.
“A few blind users in the Middle East passed the ICDL in the past, but they always required extensive help from a sighted person which defeats the purpose of proving that blind users can be completely independent in achieving any IT task. Arabic Hal screen reader provided those bright young ladies with the independence they were hoping to obtain in taking the ICDL exam. As a result, they succeeded magnificently”, said Auda Hazeem, Nattiq’s CEO.

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