The Kenya Union of the Blind is targeting call centers in its latest campaign to diversify employment opportunities for its members, said Martin Kieti, the union's chairperson.

The union has embraced technology aimed at enhancing independence by providing access and increased performance for all of its visually impaired graduates, Kieti said. The move is calculated to shift the focus from the teaching profession to other sectors. Ninety percent of all union graduates end up in teaching.

Through collaboration with mobile phone company Safaricom, five people got jobs at the company call center and Kieti hopes that number will grow.

Call-center training for union graduates could help fill the existing skilled-worker shortage in business process outsourcing, Kieti said.

To empower members, Kieti is encouraging them to use PCs and laptops with JAWS (Job Access With Speech) screen-reader software that has Braille, speech synthesizer and screen magnification, and is compatible with Microsoft Office, Internet explorer, Firefox, Corel, Word perfect and Adobe Acrobat Reader, among other applications.

The union is also encouraging members and schools to use PAC Mate Omni pocket PC. The Omni keyboard synchronizes with the desktop, e-mail, contacts, appointment files, tasks and Web applications.

The hardware and software ensures that students, graduates and employees who use it can adapt to new technology and use it to improve their lives, said James Gichuhi, the local supplier of JAWS and PAC Mate Omni.

Mary Muthuri thought that her life was over when she lost her sight in a car accident two years ago, but with the software she continues her work at the Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. She is able to read and write e-mail, surf the Internet and conduct her daily duties with minimal help from others.

In fact, she said that shortcuts on the keyboard allow her to access her e-mail faster than before. She is also able to multitask and access the Internet quickly.

The software has been introduced at Kenyatta University, where students are expected to be familiar with it by the time they get to the job market.

The software helps the 70 visually impaired students who previously had to do their exams and Continuous Assessment Tests in Braille, then they were transcribed, a process that took months and at times results were lost, said Johnson Riungu, a second-year student.

Now, the visually impaired students use the software to type their work and hand it on time, with the results returned to them more quickly, Riungu said.