{"id":339,"date":"2009-07-31T07:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-31T07:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/?p=339"},"modified":"2009-07-31T07:21:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-31T07:21:00","slug":"australia-recognises-its-first-visually-impaired-mvp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/2009\/07\/australia-recognises-its-first-visually-impaired-mvp\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia Recognises Its First Visually Impaired MVP"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Picture Credit \u2013 Vision Australia<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

MVP Kenny Johar was recently awarded the Microsoft MVP Award, for his contributions towards Internet Explorer. He has carved out a successful IT career by helping to make technology, more accessible to Australia’s visually impaired. News of his Award, was also picked up by The Australian<\/a> newspaper and you can read an excerpt of the interview below.<\/p>\n

Kenny was diagnosed with problems to his eyesight during the final years of high school, and had intended to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor. The news that he had retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative sight condition, came as a crushing blow. <\/p>\n

“It’s like a domino effect,”<\/i> he said. “When I started there were lots of obstacles for people with vision impairment to get into the IT industry, and I take a huge sense of achievement from the fact I am opening a floodgate for others to follow”.<\/i><\/p>\n

“I had strong aspirations to be a neurologist,” he recalled. “I was very interested in the human brain, and then I learned that no matter how hard I worked I was never going to be able to get there, so I had to change the direction of my career”. <\/i><\/p>\n

Everything changed when he got a laptop computer with a screen reader that allowed the information in programs and on web pages to be read aloud to him. <\/p>\n

“Suddenly the world opened up again for me,” he said. “To have something come into my life and give me such a strong ray of hope for the future made me realise how powerful a tool technology was”. <\/i><\/p>\n

Kenny is now helping to roll out a new software package that will assist vision-impaired people to go online. He remains optimistic that the IT industry will offer more opportunities to blind people. “It’s not about a disability, it’s about your attitude, and I think for people who come after me it’s not going to be a big deal; it won’t be a taboo anymore”.<\/i><\/p>\n

You can read Kenny\u2019s full interview with The Australian here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picture Credit \u2013 Vision Australia MVP Kenny Johar was recently awarded the Microsoft MVP Award, for his contributions towards Internet Explorer. He has carved out a successful IT career by helping to make technology, more accessible to Australia’s visually impaired. News of his Award, was also picked up by The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ms-news","category-mvp-award-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/windowsvj.com\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}