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Publication: The Indian Express ‘Mumbai Newsline’ At the National Association for the Blind’s Talking Book Library, not only can users choose from 1.5 lakh already recorded books, but a small team is also recording more titles, 15 hours a day. “We began to produce textbooks in Braille, for students up to tenth standard. Then we realized that college students would need textbooks too, but they would be too large and too many to produce, since it is an expensive process,” says Raman Shankar, who heads the Braille Centre and the library at NAB. “That’s when we decided to begin recording books, and we started the Talking Book Centre in 1966.” The library has 25 readers who lend their time to record books, of which nearly 50 percent are volunteers while the rest are professionals. “Readers must have it in them to depict different scenes in the books that the person listening will be able to imagine all of it,” says Shweta Pandya, a professional who has been working with the organization for the past 20 years. Pandya is one of the many professional readers who works for a humble Rs. 180 per hour, and has recorded approximately 700-900 audio books. The recordings themselves are no mean feat. They involve reading continuously for hours at a stretch, and voice quality and expressions are of utmost importance. Recordings take place in three studios simultaneously, 15 hours a day. The small but efficient, force at the NAB comprises a number of committed people, like recording engineer S C Sawant, who has been manning the sound production for nearly 41 years. “Since technology is progressing, we have to keep up, so, from a MACH 1 machine, we switched to spool cassettes and then to audio tapes in the nineties. Now we will be converting everything into the digital format the help of DAISY (Digitally Accessible Information System),” says Shankar. The internationally accepted software will be easy to navigate, and visually challenged listeners will have an easier time stopping and starting the recordings based on the chapters, section and page of their choice. The library itself is efficiently catalogued, and the only prerequisite for its use is that the person must be visually challenged and must produce a certificate proving this Librarian Jane Stephen, who has been with the NAB for 145 years now, says that at least 150 subscriptions go by post each day and at least 125 audio books are lent each day. For a deposit of Rs. 30 per audio book and a lifetime membership of Rs. 500, listeners can choose from a variety of books, textbooks and world literature. While the audio books are used by other NGOs like Happy Home and School for the Blind, the NAB takes care not to allow other institutions to use them for fear that the visually challenged will lose out to sighted people who make use of the books. “We cannot be sure that institutions will give out the books to only the blind, so it would be unfair if someone else got hold of them,” says Shankar. It’s easy to see why everyone looks up to Shankar, and why the NAB’s M. P. Shah Library is an example in itself. “Sometimes I think I am more privileged to have the opportunity to have access to these books because I have had the chance to read some of the best literature in the world,” he says with a smile. Publication: The Indian Express ‘Mumbai Newsline’ Soon, for the visually impaired: A sensitive exam system Following meeting with the NAB, commissioner for the disabled writes to various education boards with new guidelines for entrance and board exams. ACTIVISTS and advocacy groups for the disable in Mumbai have welcomed a recent letter issued by the office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disability to various education boards across states, as well as to the Ministry of Finance, advising revised guidelines on examination patterns for the visually challenged. The revised guidelines are a ray of hope, they say, for thousands of visually impaired students who lose out on job opportunities due to lack of support infrastructure at examination time. The new guidelines will make appearing for exam easier for the visually impaired and are based on a joint meeting held earlier between the commissioner for persons with disability, heads of educational boards and the Mumbai-based National Association for the Blind. “As decided in the meeting, we have written the letter to all examination-conduction bodies,” said Dr. Mohan Kumar, Chief Commissioner for persons with disability. The new guidelines deal with the selection procedure of the scribe, reader or laboratory assistant, seating arrangements and visual reasoning for the blind. According to the new guidelines, any person having a visual disability of 40 per cent and above should be permitted a scribe. Also, soon, visually impaired candidates will be able to select their scribe or reader. “Not even one per cent of the quota for blind persons is filled in the country’s public as well as private sector jobs. This is directly linked to the irregularities in the examination pattern in school, college or entrance exams for jobs in banking and other sectors,” said K Ramkrishna, director of the National Association for the Blind. “Every year, there are about 2000 blind students appearing for SSC and HSC respectively, but poor infrastructure leaves them far behind others. It had become imperative to bring to light this issue as bright students are unable to pass because of these barriers.” So, the revised guidelines include creation of district-, division-and state-level panels to oversee the implementation of better facilities for visually impaired students. Candidates will also be allowed to check the computer and meet the scribe a day before the examination. Besides, existing criteria for the scribe including a lower educational qualification than the candidate, his age, etc. are set to go. The new guidelines will also give visually impaired candidates the option of choosing the mode of examination in Braille, on a computer or in large print. The guidelines also suggest seating arrangements on the ground floor, to be made before the commencement of the examination. For entrance exams for banking jobs and other similar sectors, the letter has also suggested that questions related to visual reasoning be replaced by alternative objective questions. “It is practically impossible for us to instruct various companies or banks who conduct entrance exams,” said Dr. Kumar. “Hence, we have issued a letter to the Ministry of Finance, which we hope will take the matter seriously.” Publication: Business Standard Tata Indicom will soon replicate its Mumbai call centre, manned by visually challenged individuals, in more cities. By Makarand Gadgil If you are a Tata Indicom Customer and you receive a call from the company giving you information about its new schemes, there is a possibility that the caller is visually challenged. Under the project called Drishti, Tata Teleservices Ltd, the promoters of Tata Indiacom, has employed 20 visually challenged young men and women at its Mumbai call centre. The call centre works from the premises of the National Association of the Blind (NAB) in Worli area. The call centre, which started with 10 executives, doubled its staff to 20 within a year and celebrated its first anniversary on the 15th of this month. Navin Chaddha, chief information officer, Tata Teleservices Ltd, the man behind the idea, recalls the origin of the programme. “About a year-and-a-half ago, our software development centre in Banglore developed software called Interactive Voice Response and to test it we conducted an experiment. When it proved successful, we decided to approach NAB, who were also pursuing us to employ, some of the visually challenged youth, trained by them and thus the whole thing started.” After the selection process, Reena Chaddha, Navin Chaddha’s wife, and a communication professional, taught the selected boys and girls necessary communication skills for the job. Reena, who works as a project manager for Drishti, says: “I didn’t face any difficulty while teaching these visually-challenged youth. Politeness, a quality needed for call centre executives, is an inborn quality among them; I just needed to polish these skills.” Enthused with the success of the experiment in Mumbai, the company has now decided to expand the Drishti project to cities like Ahmedabad and Delhi as well, Navin says. Tata Teleservices Ltd sends its customer data to the call centre in an Excel file which contains details like names, addresses ad phone numbers. These are the converted into voice-based data. Then using two wireless instruments provided by Tata Teleservices, call centre executives access the data and make call. A central server keeps track of all the calls made by the executive and the number of calls ending up in a sale. The software, besides recording updates in specific format, also pinpoints errors and omissions made by the agents. This helps the supervisory staff in making the executive understand his errors and improve upon them. The set target for each executive is 100 calls per day and he gets paid Rs. 3 per established call and earns up to Rs. 9,000 per month. Chaddha says the earning level is around Rs. 5,000 in other Indian call centers. Mangesh Indulkar, one of the star-performers of the call centre, who has now been selected for training the TCS for its business process outsourcing (BPO) operations says : “I think we visually challenged people are better equipped to handle call centre jobs. We can spot slight changes in the tone of people and change our strategy to deal with the customer. But we need one opportunity to prove ourselves, Tata have given this to us and I appeal to other companies as well. Give us once chance to prove ourselves.” Deepti Gandhi, another bright call centre executive says: “For me this is a dram job, but for normal individuals it’s just another job, so I can say with confidence that we do our job more sincerely and earnestly and perform better. It is for companies to overcome their mental block.” Says Pallavi Kadam, deputy director of NAB’s Department of Employment: “we have approached many companies after the success of Tata Teleservices experiment. Many have shown interest in hiring visually challenged persons for their call centers. I am confident that the interest of these companies will soon translate into jobs for these young men and women”. “Apart from call centre opportunities, we are also focusing on medical transcription. Caby, a BPO from the healthcare sector, has employed 10 of our boys and girls,” she added. Publication: Hindustan Times “Look, Who’s Talking” At India’s first call center wholly manned by the visually impaired employees, equal measures of confidence and hope fill the air. Bus stop at Charkop Sector 2, Kandivali: 7:10 a.m TWENTY-THREE year old Nikita Patil is delighted to be one amongst the millions of Mumbaikars who go through the daily commute-office-commute grind. It’s what she’s wanted all her life. Patil is blind. She has never seen a telephone. But she works at a Tata Indicom call centre, where she has been putting in regular workdays for the last eight months. “Think of it as an Excel sheet that uses voice commands,” explains Suhas Karnik, assistant director of National Association for the Blind, who is charge of the organisation’s employment cell and is blind himself. Around 4 pm, Nikita finishes her stipulated 100 calls. But she waits for her buddies Nasir Hashmi, Mangesh Indulkar and Aparna Narkar. “We all go to the station together, it’s more fun,” she says. The friends don’t mind battling the peak hour traffic and crowded trains or this is their time together. Patil’s project manager, Reena Chaddha, is more than pleased with their performance. “We have been pleasantly surprised at their dedication levels and hard work. This Mumbai centre has been a model for others that are due to come up shortly in Delhi and Ahmedabad.” She says. Amazing accuracy On the top floor of the NAB building is an HDFC office, where two visually impaired employees scan resumes with the aid of a machine that reads out the content on their computer screens. They assess the applicants, decide which of them to contact and having done so, type in their remarks and inputs. They work against deadlines and of course, targets. At Cbay Systems, a medical transcription centre in Vikhroli, eight visually impaired youth transcribe medial data, with the help of specially designed software. And their accuracy is amazing. These employees earn anywhere between Rs. 7,500 – 12,000 per month. Say Karnik,” In an outbound call center (as is the case here), services are limited. Salaries are better in the medical transcription industry. But it has been a great experiment and experience.” Karnik, who works for the Bank of India, says the NAB plans to set up a centre to “increase the marketability of these young boys and girls” and will “produce workers ready to be employed.” The centre will teach them the basics of computer training, as well as spoken and written English skills. The latter is key to their success in these globalised times. Dinesh Kumar of Cbay says his company would be happy to appoint more blind people but their lack of English language skills are a barrier. “Their eyesight is no more a criterion, but knowledge of English is,” he says. “The majority of the blind still study in Indian language schools. They must realize that today, English can put them at par with anybody in the world.” Nothing less will do for Nikita Patil and her buddies. Sight & Sound Aparna Narkar, 22 Mangesh Indulkar, 27 Chandrakant Nimbalkar, 39 Nasir Hashmi, 30
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