IT is often said that Information and Communications Technology helps to significantly improve our quality of life.
Now, that may be true largely for able-bodied persons.
But if you happen to be a person with a disability in our society like I am – along with countless others who still, sadly, stay hidden in our homes; I am sorry to say this to you: As far as such technology is concerned, you are practically screwed!
The huge rainfall lately spelt disaster for me when lightning struck from nowhere whilst I was working on my computer.
Luckily the electrical force was not enough to deliver a lethal blow to my computer. My phone line, however, was pulverized.
My immediate reaction was to switch everything off until the storm had cleared.
Then my real nightmare began.
As a weekly columnist and active blogger I had urgent deadlines to meet.
There was no time to waste in getting my Internet up and running again.
I almost jumped for joy when a Telekom technician turned up at my doorstep near lunchtime the next day.
The excitement made me to almost forget how difficult it was the night earlier to get the Telekom telephonist to place my request under priority as I was a wheelchair using subscriber who was totally dependent on the phone line for my independence.
As I recall, she did not even care to ask me if I had a mobile phone as an alternative in case of an emergency.
More bad news followed.
The Telekom technician at my house told me that the lightning had damaged my external phone wire and that there was nothing that he could do to help me.
I was left to seek the services of an electrician on my own in order to get it fixed. When I did eventually find someone, he took two days to get to me.
His excuse? He was too busy with his work, he said. The electrician failed to understand the fact that I had to work too – from home on the computer to earn my living.
My problems, however, did not end there. After my new wiring was installed (the bill was a bomb), I had trouble getting connected to the Internet.
The Streamyx technical experts on the telephone then sent me on a wild goose chase to do all sorts of ridiculous things to my computer.
I was asked to pull out this wire and that and reconnect them. At one point I had to yell out in frustration telling them that I could not reach some of the wires because I was in a wheelchair.
I even tried begging one of them to come to my house to help me as I was a paying customer.
Even though they knew that I was disabled, they said that it was “not their policy to offer such a service to customers no matter what condition people were in.”
The only time that they are allowed to drop over at a customer’s house is during an installation session.
Then I suddenly remembered my friend V Elango who was quite an expert in computers. He came over to my house at once and sorted everything out.
But there was still one more issue left for me to solve.
I had not realised until my recent teleconversations with Streamyx that I was being overcharged by the company for my Internet services since October of last year.
That was when Streamyx had introduced a new package for its disabled customers where they had to only pay RM66.00 per month instead of the RM86.00 that I was paying for the Internet speed that I was using.
However to switch over to the new fees, I was forced to go through the whole tedious process of reapplying my subscription.
I could not understand why as all the required details were already with the telecommunications company.
I could not believe any corporate organisation wanting to put handicapped people to such inconveniences as the purpose of technology in the first place is to make lives easier for everyone.
And sure enough when I did go to the Telekom shop near my home as they insisted, there was no parking anywhere. The building itself was not wheelchair accessible.
Luckily for me my friend Andrew was with me. He managed to get one of the staff finally to attend to me in my car.
I had no choice but to pose a temporary nuisance to other drivers who squeezed past my car until the process was completed.
I was told that I could have authorised a friend to assist me. But does Telekom not realise that it is not easy to find people to afford the time to help us all the time in everything.
A better solution is for the service providers to do it for us – even if it means to come to our homes to help us out. Otherwise, we might as well kiss ICT goodbye.
The End
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