Jyotindra Mehta’s life is one less ordinary — he is perhaps India’s first software programmer with total visual impairment. Born with congenital blindness Mehta is ‘Jyo’ to everyone at IBM Global Services India Pvt Ltd, Pune.
Mehta was given the Helen Keller Award on December 2 by the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People and Shell India. The category was ‘disabled person working outside the disability sector’.
‘‘He is our resident ‘mainframe technology’ wizard,’’ says IBM general manager Raju Bhatt. Mehta was born with partial sight, which degenerated to complete blindness. He remembers, ‘‘Even during the day I had to wear, high-powered glasses. Later, I had to increasingly rely on high-powered magnifying lenses to read, as I would attend a normal school and did not learn Braille till I was in my 20s.’’
Mehta’s career in computer software has been unconventional. After he got an MA in Economics from St Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad, he worked as a payment collector for the Blind People’s Association there.
Says Mehta, ‘‘Mathematics and science have been strong points, but my disability prevented me from performing crucial laboratory experiments. So, I was forced to take up Arts.’’
All that changed in 1978 when Mehta’s family immigrated to the US. He says, ‘‘I was 30 when we moved. There I sought career-counselling and was advised to try computer programming, since I seemed to have an aptitude for it.’’
Promptly, Mehta enrolled himself at the Maryland Rehabilitation Centre, Baltimore for a course in computer fundamentals and COBOL. He says, “I was lucky as it was the first time that the centre had started a course designed for physically handicapped people. I got a job as a computer programmer in Washington DC.”
In 1990, Mehta got himself an adaptive screen reader software where a voice synthesiser guides him through computer programmes and also reads out what is fed into the computer.
He then completed his MS in Information Technology from George Washington University. Working for 12 long years with MCI Telecommunications in Texas, Jyotindra relocated to India in 1997. He says, “Though the US offers more facilities for the challenged, I found it a very individualistic society. There was a glass ceiling to my professional progress due to my disability in US which was not the case here.”
He continues, “IBM Bangalore hired me. My blindness was never an issue and I was given the same kind of responsibilities as my co-workers with no special treatment, which is the way it should be.”
IBM’s project requirements bought Mehta, wife Urvashi (who is orthopaedically challenged) and 19-year-old son Ishan to Pune this August. He has a message for the challenged, “Only when you learn to accept what you do not have will you be able to find what you do have. Also, the onus of changing attitudes is on the disabled themselves. If we demand equal opportunities, we should also be ready to deliver what is expected.”