Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Thursday, 7 January 2016 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Manique Gunaratne handing over the first Braille calendar to EFC Director General Kanishka Weerasinghe
It is the time of the year when many look for calendars for the newly dawned year, either for personal use or as a gift. Visually impaired and low-vision people can now find a readable calendar of their own. The Employers’ Federation of Ceylon’s (EFC) ICT Training Centre offers free pocket Braille and large print calendars every year. The first Braille and large print calendar for 2016 was handed over to EFC Director General Kanishka Weerasinghe by ICT Training Centre Manager Manique Gunaratne recently at the EFC.
“It is very important for vision impaired persons to expand their Braille-reading skills,” notes Gunaratne. She adds that the only method to evaluate the literacy rate of vision impaired persons is Braille. “Literacy is so important. There are talking devices, but there is nothing quite like the written word. It is so important for blind children and adults to learn to read, just as it is important for sighted people to read,” she observes. EFC Braille calendars are an absolute must for any blind adult or child on the go. They are fast, easy to use, efficient and a real necessity today.
The EFC ICT Training Centre for Persons with Disabilities removes barriers, creates solutions and expands possibilities, so that the visually-impaired can achieve their full potential.
The Braille calendars are distributed free among EFC ICT trainees and other vision impaired persons in all corners of the country. EFC ICT Training Centre provides many services for persons with disabilities. Developing technologies and ICT skills are the key roles of the ICT Training Centre. To date it has trained about 170 persons with disabilities on ICT skills. There are several courses conducted at this training centre. Each year the training centre is upgraded with equipment and with modern courses to suit the contemporary job market. The trainees are awarded well recognised certificates and the courses conducted are recognised by the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission where the certificates carry the TVEC registration number.
The ICT courses are not limited to Colombo. The training centre extended its services to the North in 2011. Library facilities with accessible formats are available at this Centre which caters to all persons in the disability field. Special assistive devices for persons with disabilities make this Centre more popular among persons with disabilities. These assistive devices are unique and they are available only at EFC.
The ICT training is now a Cisco academy. It also conducts international courses in collaboration with Cisco, Curtin University of Technology Australia and Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT).
