The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Visually challenged professional on a mission

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 25, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Visually challenged professional on a mission

Special Correspondent

Krishnakant Mane is the first blind professional to master back and front office applications
The software he has developed can read character by character or word by word

CHENNAI: A visually challenged information technology professional from Mumbai conducted introductory class for over 80 blind students and 10 teachers over the last two days to motivate them to become system administrators, instead of data operators.

Krishnakant Mane, the much sought after consultant with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), is also the co-author of Orca software for visually challenged persons.

It is the only software that can read character by character, or word by word.

Mr. Mane is the first blind IT professional who has mastered back office and front office applications and programming.

He is in the city on an invitation from the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) to install the Orca open source (Linux) and free software for use by the visually handicapped persons and to educate ELCOT officials. Incidentally, the State’s Rehabilitation Department had given Rs. 5 lakh to the ELCOT for purchase of a computer.

“I have been using proprietary software since 1988 and have moved to non-proprietary software since 2000, as it gave the much needed freedom. The proprietary software is costlier than the costliest laptops. The users are under the mercy of software firms, since they are not allowed to carry out customisation as per their needs. Hence, I started popularising Ubuntu, a community developed operating system on open source,” he said at the inaugural session on Monday.

Open source system

Mr. Mane said that through the talking software one could operate the desktop or laptop like a regular user.

The system would guide the user at each stage.

“Around 80 per cent of the Web operates on open source. Big and cash rich enterprises have started using the open source operating system that predicts great future for us. This system currently speaks in English and Hindi. Efforts are being made to introduce Malayalam. The English accent can be changed to suit one’s need and speed. This is the greatest advantage of open source and free software.”

Last week, the Karnataka Government invited Mr. Mane to spread the IT culture among the visually challenged students.

Free software

He will go to Gujarat soon. “Though everyone is talking about introducing IT culture, no one is willing to adopt the Linux operating system, which is open source software. Here, the users have to buy only the computer, while the software is free, and it can also be customised according to one’s desire.”

ELCOT’s role

ELCOT Managing Director C. Umashankar said that as part of the Corporate Social Responsibility, “we have involved ourselves in capability building for the blind people in IT skills so that they can be employed by the IT industry.”

The ELCOT was reluctant to buy a computer with proprietary software and licence for a single user at Rs. 5 lakh. “We are getting computers for Rs. 22,000 a set and will supply 22 sets instead of 1 with 19 DFT monitors to all the blind schools. Anyway the software is free. We will talk to government officials for introducing Tamil manual in the computers to help the blind people,” he said.

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