Both able – bodied and disabled people will soon have equal job opportunities in the field of information technology, according to information from the Lao disabled people Association ( LDPA ). Yesterday more than 60 disabled people began two day information technology course at the Ministry of Lab our and social welfare in Vientiane. The objective of the course are to introduce the possibilities of information technology , to provide basic computer training and to provide opportunities for visually impaired people thought IT. The trainers are disabled people from Thailand and Japan who have IT experience the course follows the first IT seminar for the disabled which was organized by the ministry of lab our and social welfare and the LDPA in 2005. it is support by the Asia Development with disabled people organization ( ADDP ) and Japanese international cooperation Agency ( JICA ).

The president of the ADDP Mrs Tomiko Yashiro, said country all over the world regularly transfer information , so IT is the most important tool for connecting people and exchanging information. “ in the past the Lao government has encouraged the use of IT as important for socio- economic development but it has not yet expanded around the country, especially amongst disabled people,” Mrs Tomiko said.

This course is the great advance for the blind; it can drastically change the method and training of education and rehabilitation for the blind she said. With advancement in accessible technology being implemented around the world, including the use of Braille keyboard, computer offer a bright feature for blind people globally. The executive director of the international Association for the visually impaired in Japan, Mr kazuhiko Yamaguchi, said that one of greatest difficulties for the blind is that they can not easily obtain information by, for example, reading book, magazines and newspaper.

“ we usually ask a volunteer to transcribe the printed data into Braille to solve this problem ,” said Mr kazuhiko Yamaguchi . in this sense , Braille is one of the most important means to get information.” We can learn lots of thing through.

reading Braille books, especially in the filed of education. The use of Braille is essential for all blind people,” he said. Initially, it had bee n thought that the computer was of no use to blind people because they clould not read the characters indicated on the monitor but thanks to the advance of speech and recently developed software, the so-called “ screen reader “ was of developed for the blind. One of these is call JAWS.

“ thanks to the screen reader, JAWS, we can write and read a letter and make a documents,” Mr Kazuhiko said. We can communicate at anytime with people who are not blind by e-mail and now we can also communicate with deaf people, which was impossible in the past,” he said. We can access a wide range of information through the internet, we can get what we need from a web site, we enjoy reading digital newspapers, magazines and book., and we can expand our job options through the use of computer technology,” he said.