Philippine Call Center Digital Inclusion Milestone

RantWoman is noting the following milestone:

Philippine call center to employ blind people only
GMANews.TV -
Friday, October 16

Next week, the Philippines will open its first ever call center that only employs blind persons, a milestone in the struggle of disabled people to cross the digital divide.

With eight training rooms and three desks dedicated for outbound calls, the call center facility will be equipped with adaptive hardware and software customized to the needs and abilities of the blind.

Six totally blind, low vision and sighted graduates are currently being trained as trainors in Taipei, Taiwan, the headquarters of the the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Digital Opportunity Center (ADOC).

ADOC provided funds for the facility, a project of the Adaptive Technology for Rehabilitation, Integration, and Empowerment of the Visually Impaired (ATRIEV) Inc.

The six trainors all came from ATRIEV, an organization that pioneered computer training for the blind in the country, the Resources for the Blind, National Council on Disability Affairs, Philippine National School for the Blind, and the Department of Education.

The facility’s customized outbound call center software and refreshable Braille display as hardware will allow totally blind individuals to provide customer assistance while listening to the client on the phone and reading the responses in Braille.

With the technology, the blind will hopefully gain the same speed and efficiency as the sighted call center agent, ATRIEV said.ATRIEV has provided IT-related training for the blind for the last 15 years, with the use of a screen reader – a software application that translates text to speech – and a screen magnification software.ATRIEV also provides on-the-job training in voicemail transcription to its qualified IT-related training graduates, in partnership with Gallop IT Solutions, a local transcription company.

The launching ceremony for the project will be held on October 20 ATRIEV’s Training Center for the Blind in Quezon City.

The project is expected to be presented at the APEC Conference to be held in Singapore in November 2009.

- GMANews.TV

RantWoman congratulates everyone involved. She also sends the following inquiries:

Who does their technical customer support? RantWoman pretty much bets there are and should be blind people in that link too.

RantWoman wishes the new workers a cafeteria and plenty of shopping opportunities free of touch-screen point of sale devices.

In honor of the outbound call center call RantWoman took first thing this morning, RantWoman also wishes the workers an option on their menu for something along the lines of "I don't CARE how free your publication is. Don't you DARE send me any print. I read your publication online because I'm BLIND."