Cisco Promotes Special Needs IT Education in Pakistan

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Pakistan is a country with a youthful population that has taken bold steps to expand its economy and create jobs.

And as the wealth of the country continues to grow, it is trying to do more for members of its society that have not had the opportunity to play an active role in the economy—with a little help from the Cisco® Networking Academy®.

A Cisco-sponsored IT Essentials (ITE) Program for Special Needs is currently aimed at training 120 students with various disabilities in four different cities in Pakistan.

Visually impaired, wheelchair dependent and deaf people have started attending Cisco IT Essentials courses in Peshawar, Faisalabad, Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

The initiative has been designed "with the view of imparting the latest skills to people with special needs, in order to make them useful for society," explains Faheem Anwar of the Cisco Regional Networking Academy in Islamabad.

"We started by contacting the Ministry of Welfare and Special Education in Islamabad and the Pakistan Disabled Foundation in Karachi. The ministry soon expressed its interest in the project, and signed up to becoming a major stakeholder."

"I am enjoying learning about Windows and the Internet very much."

— Kamal Yousaf, student

Anwar and his colleague Abbas Malik are supervising implementation of the IT Essentials Program for Special Needs in the four sites across the country, after the project was first mooted by Mu'men Suliman, Networking Academy area academy manager for the Gulf and Pakistan.

Modifying the IT Essentials courses to cater for the students has involved three elements. The first was to hire qualified instructors with the experience to teach students who are blind, deaf or have physical disabilities.

Each site has three: one with the usual portfolio of skills and experience, one specialized in instructing blind people, and a third with the necessary skills to teach deaf students.

Physical changes to the classrooms and labs, such as providing suitably adapted desks and work areas, have been necessary to ensure wheelchair access.

More high-tech measures form the third element of the Special Needs program. People who are not visually impaired can probably only guess at the difficulties involved in learning IT Essentials with very poor or non-existent eyesight.

One solution chosen by the initiative is to use JAWS (Job Access with Speech) software, which interprets visual information, usually displayed on a screen, into speech or Braille.

The students involved are mostly young people, between 20 and 25 years old, who have previously been educated to high-school level, plus a handful are college graduates. They have all been given scholarships by Cisco in order to fund their studies.

Tehmina Banaras, 21, is optimistic that enrolling in the Special Needs program at the Institute of Communication Technologies will improve her IT skills "in my daily life and at work."

Deaf from birth and now a 12th grade student currently studying at the National Special Education Centre for Hearing Impaired Children in Islamabad, she has always had a wide range of interests.

Her proficiency with a PC came from earlier experience she received at the Sir Syed Deaf Association, also in Islamabad. An evening course allowed her to get to grips with computers and Microsoft Word.

"I have great aptitude for fine arts such as painting and drawing," she explains, "and I know how to handle and use a computer."

At 36, Kamal Yousaf is a little older than most students, but he still has ambitions for a career in IT. Visually impaired since birth, he currently makes a living as a music teacher and is taking the course at BRAINS Post Graduate College in Peshawar.

"I am enjoying learning about Windows and the Internet very much," he says. "I have no criticisms about the course."

His attitude is shared by all the students currently benefiting from the program, according to Suliman.

He says: "The students themselves are very enthusiastic about the setting up of their own (program) with the support of Cisco Networking Academy instructors and administrators, with the aim of building a career in IT in Pakistan."

After graduation, individual students will have the opportunity to go on to other Cisco courses, thanks to the availability of places for students with disabilities at some conventional networking academies.

The Networking Academy initiative dovetails with other attempts to cater for disabled people in Pakistan. For example, Government Model Colleges, an important component of the state education system, are reserving places specifically for people with disabilities.

According to the Asia-Pacific Center on Disability there were 3,293,155 people with some form of disability in Pakistan at the time of the most recent census, although "it is recognized by the Government that the prevalence rate is higher than indicated."

And looking further a-field, there is plenty of enthusiasm for starting similar Networking Academy schemes in several countries, including Kuwait and Bahrain. It seems that many will be watching this small but significant attempt to integrate people with disabilities into society.