Keynote Address

In Ahmedabad, we attended these two conferences, one organized by CSI and the other one by the members of AccessIndia. AccessIndia is an online group of people interested in the field of accessibility for the disabled.

The focus of both conferences was accessibility. I presented a paper on accessibility with Web 2.0 in CSI. The paper was OK. Overall, there were some interesting sessions in CSI -- like the one from the National Institute of Design (NID) about accessible design concepts developed by NID students as part of their project work.
The AI conference was organized at the Blind People's Association (BPA) and the BpA director Ms. Nandini Rawal gave the keynote address. This was definitely "the best" keynote address I have ever heard in any of the conferences I have ever attended. The lady spoke from her heart and had a lot of substance in what she was saying -- I'm totally impressed.
Interestingly enough, Kanchan -- the stage manager -- had the brain wave in the middle of this awesome keynote address that she didn't have anyone to do a "vote of thanks" or whatever it is that you should do in such conferences after the keynote address. Here I am sitting in a corner in the second row listening intently when I get a tap on my shoulder and a voice hangs over my shoulder and tells me in my ear: "sir, Kanchan madam aapko stage pe bula rahi hain. Aapko in madam ke liye vote of thanks karna hai."
I turn around flustered... She couldn't be serious, I thought to myself. "main nahin kar sakta" I reply. The guy goes: "Sir mujhe kya pata. Main toh siraf Kanchan madam ka message le ke aaya hun. Aap chal ke unse baat kar lo."
I see his logic and decide to move to the stage with him where kanchan is sitting right behind the speaker. In hushed voices:
I: Kanchan, what is this?"
kanchan: "Please do this. Will you do it?"
I: "But what is a vote of thanks? What am I supposed to say?"
Kanchan: "Just shut up and listen carefully to what she is saying and you need to summarize what she has said in your vote of thanks. Will you do it?"
I: (An extremely tentative) "ok"
At the end of it, I did manage to put together a couple of witty remarks that at least to me did summarize the address -- but really, I wish I could prepare such a seriously impressive presentation some day.
Update: Harish just posted the text of the presentation on the list. Pasting it below:
KEYNOTE ADDRESS OF NANDINI RAWAL
AT ACCESS INDIA CONFERENCE AT BLIND PEOPLE’S ASSOCIATION
21 September, 2008


My Dear Bright, Brilliant and Successful Friends,

I am so privileged to stand in front of you today. My heart is bursting with pride when I look at this gathering of young, savvy, qualified persons who are so confident, assured and charming. Blind people have come a long way from what I’d seen them 27 years ago when I joined the BPA.

I salute all of you achievers for your success but always remember “success is never final, failure is never fatal, it is courage that counts”.

As I stand before you, I am trying to remember the Keynote Addresses I have heard in the past. I can’t remember many because, probably, they failed to strike a chord in my heart. I therefore, decided to make my Keynote address, one that would touch your heart and being and remain with you.

I decided that I would share my dreams and visions with you so that all our tomorrows are bright and beautiful.

Power of the Dream:

My first dream is that Bill Gates sponsors the Jaws Software and gives it free to each needy person who is visually impaired. I wish that technology acts as the great leveler and acts as bridge between the blind and people who can see we can name the software “whispering windows”!!

My second dream is that each school for the blind starts believing in technology and is able to afford a computer for every blind student. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment should give computers to blind students as part of the Assistive Devices Scheme. This dream will thus be titled “Information Technology within reach of each.

Persons with visual impairment are all very different. They form a very diverse community. We have blind people who are physiotherapists, computer programmers, teachers, telephone operators, voice culturists, farmers etc. We, professionals who work with and for the blind should recognize this diversity and create programmes that nurture this diversity. I dream of agencies that create programmes for the individual abilities of the blind and not the other way around.

I see before me, a sea of young professionals like you who are successful and who have made it. But I see thousands of blind students who are unseen and unsung.

To quote Oliver God Smith:
‘Many a flower is born to blush unseen and
Waste its sweetness on the desert air”

I hope these unsung heroes find a chance or seize the opportunity to exhibit their talents.

While all of you are in tune with technology and have mastered it for increasing your own efficiency, I know a lot of successful blind people, many of them from my generation, who are afraid of embracing technology. They are successful Counselors, Professors, and Lawyers but are averse to technology. I remember the words of Alvin Toffler, Author of “Future Shock”, who wrote “The Illiterate of the 21st Century are not those, who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn”. I wish all these friends make friends with technology and realize that it will only help them and make their lives easier.

When I look at the successful people in this room like Harish, Kanchan, Ranchhod, Pranay, Dinesh, Vikram, I realize that this number is not enough for the India of our dreams. I wish we could photocopy people like you and distribute them all over the length and breadth of India.

The Silent Section – When I look around this audience, I see greys, white brown mainly males in their formal wear. I see only a handful of my sisters who cannot see.

- Why are they so silent?
- Why are they invisible?
- Why are they marginalized?

These questions should taunt and haunt us till we provide equal access and opportunities to these women. All of us must make conscious, concerted and concrete efforts in this direction.

The other issue which touches my heart is the lot of blind people in rural areas. Agencies like the Blind People’s Association and National Association for the Blind have tried to level the chasm between the urban and rural blind by initiating community based services. These efforts are few and far between and we must pledge to do something positively and immediately for making rural blind persons aware of their rights.

Pass on the Heritage….

All of you here have achieved success because of the combined mix of your own efforts, efforts of your loved ones and contribution of society.

What, then, have each of you done for the empowerment of other blind people? May be to repay a debt of gratitude or to celebrate your own success, don’t you think you should selflessly strive to reach others not as fortunate as you? It is in our power to give, so we should give all we can while we can….

I appeal to all of you to pass on the heritage to as many blind people as you can but atleast three persons per year.

Lastly my wish is that media relays positive and factual images of blind people. If we are to have an informed and responsible media, we owe it to ourselves to feed them the right information of people like Gagandeep, who has got admission into IIM, Bangalore this year, of Dr. Samir Mansuri who is a Counselor to many Bollywood starts, of Nitya who was a Radio Jockey on Radio Mirchi or Ashish Mankad, a Chartered Accountant. We have many stories to tell but we need the courage, the commitment to follow up and reach that unreached star.
I end with a poem...

The Impossible Dream

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To be better far than you are
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
And to fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march
Into hell for a heavenly cause

And I know if only I be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star




The sky is yours for the beckoning …….. reach out for the unreached star



Nandini Rawal
Project Director
Blind People’s Association
Ahmedabad.

Ahmedabad

We're in Ahmedabad these days - Aman and I and a friend of mine - to attend a couple of conferences that I'll write about later. We came in on the Gujarat Sampark Kranti -- air tickets were too expensive and it didn't occur to me untill it was very late that I could ask my office to sponsor the trip because I am presenting a technical paper in the conference and have my employer's name all over the "about the author" write-up.
In any case, the 2nd AC journey was comfortable enough but for a really boring character we ended up having as an unwelcome companion for the enitre part of our waking travel time.
This guy had the fourth "birth" in our coupe -- the other three obviously being the three of us. This was an AC marketing guy working with an MNC and completely frustrated with his life, job, and everything. He had a firm beleif that IT people had very little work, no pressure, and unnecessarily bloated pay packets. A myth I did not even try to clear up him... and the entire duration, he kept trying to ask how much my salary was in different rounds of "involuntary interrogation" sessions he had with me.
He had a firm opinion that he should have an opinion about everything that everyone else was talking about around him and so, he will poke his fairly ugly and very fat "whatever" in any conversation that the three of us will try to make.
By the end of it Aman was so bugged up with this guy that she stopped recognizing that he even existed in that space -- complete ignorance of all actions and words -- but anyway by this time, it was time to get down.
We had someone pick us up from the station and delivered to the house of someone we hadn't ever met in our life earlier. These were a family friend of Aman's father. It is a nice and comfortable house and the people are really nice. Preeti, our hostess, has been taking care of us, having us dropped and picked up from the conference venue everyday and taking us out for shopping and dinner -- all this in the middle of her kids' terminal exams. I couldn't imagine doing this ever....
And "Baa" has been cooking really tasty guju breakfast for us.
Aman went and shopped for Lehanga Cholis yesterday and has plans for more today.
We're eating a lot of Guju food and yesterday, we had "Kathiavarhi" which is food from Saurashtra -- I didn't know the difference or even the fact that a "KathiaVarhi" quezeene existed untill yesterday.
We haven't done our usual tourist stuff so far on this trip -- visiting famous/historical/significant places of the city -- I guess that'll happen on another trip. We have our hands and "tummies" full this time round.

robbed on the Information Highway

It finally happened to me as well....
There is this company called "reservation rewards", which apparently made over $86 million last year. It made all this money not producing goods and/or services or anything at all for that matter but by cheating and ripping off people on the Internet.
I got a charge of $12 last month on my credit card statement and it said "purchase reservation rewards" - I didn't remember making any such purchase but thought this may be some charge that the credit card company applied or something. Busy doing other "more important" things at that time, I put it off for follow up on a later date.
This month again I saw the exact same charge of $12 and I was very sure there was nothing in my bank transactions or otherwise that should have triggered this charge.
I called up the credit card company and they said that this was from someone called "reservation rewards" and gave me a 1 800 number I could call up to talk to them.
When I told them that this was not a company I had ever done any business with or subscribed to, they said that off late they were getting a lot of those complaints but usually if a person called them up, they would promptly cancel the recurring subscription charge and probably return the money already charged.
Sure enough, I called up the 1800 number and an IVR picked up the phone and guess what it said:
"Welcome to reservation rewards. If you want to cancel your subscription, press 1."
Have you ever in your conscious memory come across a business who will put the option to cancel/return their goods as the number 1 item on the menu?
As soon as I pressed 1, it asked me to punch in my credit card number. There was no way, I was giving my credit card number to someone who I didn't know and had nothing to do with. After a few error messages, the IVR transfered me to a live person.
The same story again, the person started asking all sorts of personal information - my zip code, my phone number and so on.
By this time, I was completely frustrated. The coversation went like this:
I: "who the hell are you to ask me all this? I never did buy anything from you. Why are you charging this monthly fee for me?"
person on the phone: "I will cancel your subscription going forward."
I:"great. but what about the money you've already charged me?"
other person: "I am starting the process of returning your $12 charged for the month of August."
I: "But there was a similar charge in July as well."
other person: "I am starting the process of returning $24 charged to you for July and august. Is there anything else I can assist you with?"

After this, I googled around for what this company does and guess what, every search hit other than the one for the "reservation rewards" website was about this exact rip off. These guys have come up with some obscure mechanism of getting your credit card information from websites (for me it was "buy.com" -- a reasonably reputed website) -- when you make a purchase on that website and automatically enroll you into their monthly program. What that program is and what you get out of it is something that probably no one knows.
...and apparently this is all legal!!! They are robbing people in small amounts and making millions by stealing and it is all legal.
They have made the whole process of returning your money so straight forward to avoid people from going all out and escalating this with the authorities... after all it was just $12 and I did get it back after a phone call .... who has the time to call the police for this.
So, next time you are about to make your credit card payment, take a close look at some small charge that you don't seem to remember having spent.