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Blind professor shows the way

AL AIN - Visual impairment at the age of 23 did not prevent Dr Hesham Kamel of Egypt from obtaining a doctorate from a US university and contributing to several research projects.

Dr Kamel, who lost his sight after an unsuccessful laser operation in Switzerland, is now associate professor in the IT College of UAE University.

"I was young when I became blind. For two years after my disability, I could not believe what happened and, therefore, I could not get accustomed to the condition. But I forced myself to do something for a new life," Dr Kamel told Khaleej Times.

Dr Kamel, who obtained both his bachelor of arts and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, has published 150 research papers and won eight regional and international awards for his research efforts, besides patenting several inventions in the US such as an animation tool for the blind.

He said that a major difficulty in his life occurred when the University of California administration hesitated to accept a blind student in a scientific field like computer science because visually impaired usually chose humanities or art specialisations.

"Researchers have developed tools for making graphics accessible to visually impaired users, allowing them to access graphics, identify shapes and create drawings, but have not yet addressed the issue of animation," he said.

His invention, the IC2D animation extension, enables visually impaired users to create animations. It combines technique for drawing with a method for hierarchical labelling and applied a set of user controls: motion rotation and toggling to produce an animation method for the blind.

He said that this scheme provides visually impaired people with another method to express their creativity and communicate through another form of graphical output.

"Further, we hope that by making possible what seems impossible, we might increase communication between blind computer users and the sighted world," he added.

In collaboration with H. Harmain and D. Guerchi from the IT College, Dr Kamel is preparing a tool, Universal Talk (UTalk), which is an Arabic webpage reader.

"The technology and tools used by visually impaired people nowadays lags behind the rapid advancement of information technology and the Internet. Dynamic Braille displays are useful for reading the screen information and Web pages as text," Dr Kamel said.

However, these devices are extremely expensive which prohibits the majority of blind computer users from using them. Thus, denying these individuals access to the Internet.

"We believe that access to information for Arabic-speaking visually impaired people should be made as easy as using computers by sighted people," he said.

Dr Harmain said that he did not feel he was working as man with a disability. He added that Dr Kamel is a powerful, brave, confident and faithful model for disabled people.

"The UTalk research is designed to study how visually impaired people use technology in the UAE, to study the non-visual methods that visually impaired people use to access the Internet in the UAE and to design an Arabic-enabled Webpage Reader," added Dr Harmain.

It Implements the Arabic-Enabled Webpage Reader and studies the impact of UTalk on the way visually impaired people access the Internet.

Dr Harmain said that potential users for the Arabic webpage reader include students with pronunciation difficulties, people learning Arabic as a second language and people learning to read.

Dr Kamel is grateful that Shaikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Education and UAEU Chancellor, decided to take him on the technical staff despite his being visually impaired.