The hi-tech workplace of today pays little attention to the needs of the physically-challenged employees. In fact, even schools and higher centres of learning adopt computer-based learning systems without creating adequate facilities for the physically-challenged students. It is estimated that 98 per cent of disabled children in India are unable to attend school.

NIIT under the leadership of Prof J R Isaac has developed a software packagecalled I-write that enables handicapped children, specifically spastics, to complete their school education. The software is organised in such a way that each teacher can develop his own course-ware depending on the specific requirement. Prof Isaac received the National Award for Best Technological Invention for this initiative.

The programme allows the user to write on the monitor without the use of a keyboard. This is particularly useful to spastics who have little or no voluntary muscle control and cannot hold a pen or pencil. Such a user is provided with a pressure pad with which he/she can operate the computer.

Other input devices like a light-interrupt or a voice-activated switch can also be used, depending on the user and the budget. However, a basic level of English is necessary to use this programme. Isaac and his team are working towards making this programme and the related solutions as reasonably priced as possible.

The Spastics Society of Tamil Nadu (SPASTN) is using this programme. NIITplans to take this package to all parts of the country, after getting them translated into various regional languages.

As part of the organisation's efforts to demystify the tools of info-tech learning, NIIT set up a free-access Internet computer on the boundary wall of the NIIT complex in New Delhi. Today, the 14-inch colour monitor, linked to a Pentium II processor, is being accessed by girls and boys living in the neighbourhood slum.

There is no contact between the NIIT research staff and the users of the Internet kiosk. But through a special monitor inside the NIIT complex, NIIT researchers observe how it gets used. The researchers discovered that these children could access websites that offer news and cricket updates, close browser programs, open popular desktop programs, scrawl their names in coloured letters on the screen, and create document files, without any formal guidance. The R&D section of NIIT calls this ``minimally invasive education''. It was also an effort at testing the learning skillsof those far removed from microprocessors and modems. The diagnostic learning project took off on January 26 this year.

Although the kids received no formal guidance, they seek out members of their own group with some basic knowledge about computers. The informal guidance is thus sought in their own environment. Though self-learning is not a real substitute to formal learning, the R&D team believes that such initiatives can help create a certain level of baseline knowledge of computers. ``Perhaps it would help people at least internalise computers the way they have internalised the telephone and the cable TV today. The PC should not be viewed as an external technology downloaded by the so-called knowledgeable city folk,'' the team maintains.

In the field of info-tech education training too, NIIT has undertaken citizenship programmes. On September 5, 1999, on the occasion of the Teachers' Day, the leading info-tech trainer offered a free computer literacy programme called SWIFT Start to school teachers inDelhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad. The eight-hour programme familiarised teachers with the fundamentals of computers, such as how to word process a document, create a spread sheet, surf the Internet, and send an e-mail.

NIIT also offers scholarships called `Bhavishya Jyoti Scholarships' to students enrolling for its DNIIT program. The Bhavishya Jyoti Scholarships entails that the successful students get fee waivers ranging from 25 per cent to 100 per cent, based upon their performance in an all-India written test and personal interview.

The scholarships are offered for the following four categories of students and the value of the scholarship varies with the economic background of the eligible students.

NIIT has a special offer for engineers: there is an alternate scholarship of 75 per cent of the tuition fee on various courses and Rs 1,500 off on all MOC courses.

During the Kargil war, NIIT came forward to help the families of soldiers who lost their lives orwere injured on the border. NIIT founder and managing director Rajendra S Pawar had at that time offered state-of-the-art NIIT program free to ``a family member of soldiers and officers who had either laid down their lives or been injured while protecting the sovereignty of India''.

Further, in keeping with the mood of solidarity with the Kargil soldiers, artists and designers from NIIT got together and organised Udaan, an exhibition-cum-sale of their paintings, sculptures, digital art, photographs, handcrafted items and other artefacts at NIIT on July 17, 18 and 19, 1999. The artists who specifically created over 200 exhibits for Udaan have forwarded the entire proceeds of around Rs 1 lakh to the Army Welfare Fund.

Every year, NIIT organises a fun-filled treat called the `Family Annual Day' for NIITians and their families. In 1999, however, remembering the Kargil martyrs, NIIT decided to break with this tradition and donate the entire amount allocated for the event to the Army Welfare Fund.

Inaddition, NIIT also encouraged its employees worldwide to contribute liberally to this world. The organisation presented a cheque of Rs 22 lakh to the Army Welfare Fund.

NIIT's social development initiatives emanate from stupendous successes which the organisation attained in the world of IT business. NIIT employs over 3,700 people and has wholly-owned subsidiaries in the US, Europe, Singapore, ASEAN Region and Japan with operations in over 30 countries.

Global revenues of NIIT and its subsidiaries for nine-month period ending June 30, 1999, reached Rs 632.91 crore (US $ 148.92 million) with profits before tax of Rs 96.99 crore (US $ 22.82 million). For the year ending September 30, 1998, it recorded global revenues of Rs 648.4 crore (US $ 160 million).