Moses Chowdari Gorrepati works with great passion for persons with disability and is eager to build sustainable programmes to empower them. Equipped with a Masters degree in English literature from University of Hyderabad, he works as a Programme Manager (Training & Solutions) at Bengaluru-based EnAble India.
Mr. Gorrepati’s good communication skills enthral, inspire and engage his listeners and he has an infectious zest for life. Incidentally, he is a person with low vision.
Working in collaboration with over 30 organisations across the country and abroad, he has trained over 200 persons with the disability. “The biggest challenge we face today is our own inhibitions. We need to get over them and seek solutions. I want challenged persons to think with an open mind to be able to see the vast opportunities waiting to be explored. We have technology that has changed our lifestyle. People with physical disability cannot just overcome their own problems but also show the path to others. I want them to be change agents in society,” he emphasises.
After schooling at Vijaya Mary Integrated School for the Blind at Gunadala in city, he pursued intermediate in Loyola College, Ahmedabad before moving to Hyderabad University for his Masters in English literature. “I had my moments of frustration. Once, our professor asked us to read Vikram Seth’s Suitable Boy and come prepared to answer questions the next day. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own and asking somebody to read out the entire novel for me at one go was not polite,” he recalls. Screen reading software enabling the visually-challenged to use mainstream computer applications including the Internet came to his rescue. “A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on a computer screen. This interpretation is then re-presented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output device,” he explains. Brandishing his ‘smart’ cane, he says it offers a lot of information to a user. “But it tends to focus on the floor or at the best below knee level.
A user can avoid objects that are attached to the floor, but overhanging tree branches and other free standing objects are much more difficult to detect,” he admits.
He is happy that people’s attitude is changing. “In corporate sector, about 600 firms are willing to hire services of the physically disabled and the good news is that there is a proportionate growth in the number of job aspirants.”
Mr. Gorrepati is a person too large for worry, too strong for fear and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
