Addington.net cares for people with disabilities and provides free internet for them. One of our regular clients who visits about twice a week is Gary. Gary is 49 years old and is partially blind and deaf and doesn’t have the internet connection at home.
Gary used to work in engineering and these days he helps people when they have problems with their computers. He helps them with the memory and CPU and sometimes with software problems. He also used to help the Salvation Army fix computers so they were able to be sold in their shops.
Gary has a lot of experience with computers. He did a business computer course in 1990. However, now most of his knowledge is self attained. When he talks about computers it makes me almost feel like a novice.
Gary knows Addington.net almost from when it opened in 2001. He used to come in to download software, such as Java and virus protectors, from the internet and now gets our staff to check if there are any updates for these. Gary has a USB flash drive which he brings to the Centre and we download any updates onto that. He then takes it home and transfers the updates to his laptop. These days Gary loves to play PS2 games and comes in every week to get some cheats from the internet.
A wish Gary has for Addington.net is to see software on our computers with voice synthesizer and a reader. Such an application is able to enlarge the text and it will read the text for you as well.
Gary really enjoys coming to Addington.net, because he feels welcome here and we hope he will visit us for a long time to come.
Christchurch Time
No comments:
Post a Comment