Center for Information Services opens new building

In many classes, teachers have a hard time getting their students to talk, let alone listen. But in the classes at the Center for Information Resources, which celebrated the opening of its new building on Friday, even the computers talk -- and they listen too. CIR, which is now located at 42nd and Chestnut Streets, teaches people with disabilities how to use and program computers and provides those with special needs with the equipment to manipulate and interact with the machines. Lasting ten months, the training program is physically and intellectually taxing, according to Bobbie Makous, the CIR's director of communications. She explained that the students have an "incredibly strenuous" schedule for people with disabilities, as they attend classes five days a week, for seven hours a day. "The only way to make our product salable -- and our product is our graduates -- is to make the program strenuous," Makous says, "We have to toughen them up." She said that CIR's 93 percent placement rate attests to the program's success. The trumpet player who provided the event's entertainment, Bill McCann, is a visually impaired CIR graduate who works as a systems analyst. "CIR trained me well for a career in data processing," he said. "There were lectures and hands-on training. We were always working with deadlines." Samples of the interactive technology which the students use were on display during the Friday open house. One machine used by visually impaired students is the speech output computer. The machine audibly reads the text on its screen, and according to one visually impaired CIR employee, speaks with something of a Swedish accent. Another machine widely used by the students is a voice activated computer, which can be operated by physically impaired programmers without a keyboard. Turning the device on requires only that the user say "voice console wake up." He can then enter words using the International Communications Alphabet, a system in which specific words represent letters. Tailoring equipment to each student's needs is an important part of CIR's job, according to Executive Director James Vagnoni. "Each situation is unique," he said, adding that the center helps students combine the available equipment to best suit their specific needs. Ten percent of the graduates require special equipment, and the cost of this equipment could potentially make them less desirable as employees. So far, this has not been a problem, for state vocational rehabilitation agencies have paid for this equipment. "But that may change," says Vagnoni, as the economy drags, which would lay a burden on employers. One employer of CIR graduates, Palmer Dalesandro, assistant vice president for information systems at Thomas Jefferson University, minimizes the weight of that burden. He claims that the cost of adaptive equipment is not prohibitive, compared, for example, to recruiting costs. He praises the CIR graduates he has hired. "They have been extraordinarily good performers. Hiring them is not only good for them and good for us; it is also good for our other employees. Seeing them succeed is an incentive for everybody to work hard." (CUT LINE) Please see CHESS, page 11 CHESS, from page 1

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.