A lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try of­fi­cial is en­cour­ag­ing dis­abled young women to pur­sue ca­reers in tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor.

Speak­ing at a re­cent event for young women with dis­abil­i­ties,Sher­ry McMil­lan, an ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer with the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (TATT), en­cour­aged the au­di­ence of about 100 dis­abled young women, aged 16 to 25, to go af­ter their am­bi­tions of a ca­reer in tech.The young women, rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous schools and or­gan­i­sa­tions, got some in­for­ma­tion about ca­reer choic­es in the in­dus­try.

Host­ed by TATT, the event marked Girls in ICT Day 2015, and set out to en­cour­age the young women to max­imise the use of tech­nol­o­gy to achieve their aca­d­e­m­ic goals and en­cour­age them to pur­sue ca­reers in this area.

Fea­ture speak­er Veera Bha­jan, founder of Foot­prints Foun­da­tion, shared her per­son­al sto­ry of suc­cess, giv­ing in­sights in­to how she achieved her dream of be­com­ing an at­tor­ney, al­though she was born with­out arms. Bha­jan chal­lenged the young women to fo­cus on their abil­i­ty rather than dis­abil­i­ty, in spite of the chal­lenges they face.

TATT Pric­ing and Mar­ket Re­search ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­nie Baldeo said the or­gan­i­sa­tion planned to pro­vide as­sis­tive tech­nolo­gies and equip­ment­to per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.The event al­so fea­tured an ex­hi­bi­tion show­cas­ing var­i­ous aca­d­e­m­ic and vo­ca­tion­al pro­grammes ac­ces­si­ble by per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, through the lat­est as­sis­tive tech­nolo­gies. The ex­hibitors were the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of High­er Ed­u­ca­tion Re­search, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, iGovTT, the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Youth Train­ing and Em­ploy­ment Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (YTEPP).

One high­light of the event was YTEPP's Mo­bile Bus, which is out­fit­ted with as­sis­tive tech­nolo­gies. Stu­dents vis­it­ing the bus at the end of the event were thrilled to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use those de­vices.

The lo­cal event was part ofan In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union-backed ini­tia­tive that aims to em­pow­er and en­cour­age girls and young women to con­sid­er ca­reers in tech­nol­o­gy-re­lat­ed fields. The ITU is the Unit­ed Na­tions' spe­cialised agency for ICTs.

Dur­ing the work­shop the young women were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide prac­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion to as­sist TATT in the roll out of one of its Uni­ver­sal Ser­vice Pro­gramme, which is aimed at giv­ing dis­abled peo­ple ac­cess to ba­sic telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices. Work­shop par­tic­i­pants of­fered feed­back on which tech­nolo­gies they found most suit­able to ac­cess mo­bile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices to meet their dai­ly needs.