IF you're still skeptical about the impact of PCs and the Internet on human lives, just ask Bienvenido Canonizado, a 15-year-old student at the University of Santo Tomas.

"It makes life easier. Instead of going to the library, I just have to log on at home. Also, when you chat, nobody cares how you look or what your physical disabilities are," he said.

While this might sound like a teenager's typical response to anything high-tech, for Bien, technology plays an even more important role in helping him interact with the world.

Why? Because Bien is blind.

Born blind due to a neurological disorder, Bien also has difficulty hearing from his left ear and sometimes finds it hard to move the left side of his face and body. Thanks to alternative screen access technology like speech recognition, however, Bien is able to play the PC by ear. While they just might be a novelty to sighted users, speech synthesizer programs provide every stroke of the keyboard and click of the mouse with a vocal response. This allows the visually impaired person to have confidence in word processing, e-mail and even Web surfing, knowing that whatever is on the screen will be spoken aloud for instant feedback.

Bien belongs to the first batch of graduates of a free computer literacy course given by Adaptive Technology for Rehabilitation, Integration and Empowerment of the Visually Impaired, or Atriev. Apart from Bien, seven others graduated, including Claidabel Bengullo, Danny Dalida, Norma Lupango, Nanette Morales, Angela Nares, Marlyn Santiago, and Imelda Sison. Atriev, a private organization affiliated with the Philippine Blind Union, plans to hold these two-month courses regularly, divided into two batches of 10 students each in a year.

"We'd like this technology to become more popular. We want the visually impaired to take advantage of this technology, whether for educational or livelihood purposes," said Antonio Llanes Jr., Atriev's president.

It was at Llanes' house that Atriev conducted the training for the first batch of graduates. He said that they have four Pentium PCs donated by the International Bazaar Foundation through the Department of Foreign Affairs. The commencement exercises for this first batch was held at the National Computer Center, whose director general Ramon "Ike" Se¤eres has offered one of the NCC's computer training labs as a venue for Atriev's courses.

"What we plan to do is conduct special training for them, and get them encoding contracts with the government," Se¤eres said. He said the government plans to put up several encoding centers in Metro Manila.

Bien regards encoding, however, not as an end in itself, but as a useful tool for achieving his ambition to become a lawyer. Right now, Bien is a sophomore at UST majoring in political science, after which he plans to take up law at Ateneo. He even cited as an example Marvel Comics' Daredevil, whose real identity is the successful blind lawyer Matt Murdock.

He said that he hopes to get a scholarship for law school, saying that he is very confident of meeting academic requirements because he has always gotten good grades in school.

"Not that I'm bragging, but it's just that the blind have been deprived of so much. We've been deprived of our sight, our mobility and sometimes even our dignity. So you can't blame blind students if they're very outspoken about their achievements," he explained.

Carolina Catacutan-Sam, Atriev's public relations officer, is one of the three computer literacy trainers along with Llanes and Atriev's vice president, John Javier.

"It's a learning process. As a visually impaired teacher training visually impaired students, the most important thing is for us to learn to visualize the screen," she said. She explained that the computer training starts off with keyboard familiarization in the DOS environment. Only then do they make the jump to Microsoft Windows, which she said is very difficult for the blind at first. In this instance, a graphical user interface is actually a challenge.

Catacutan-Sam stressed, however, that the computer technology itself is nothing if it is not used to enhance a user's talents, such as writing. In her case, she uses the access technology for writing her teleplays, including the episode titled "Liwanag" which appeared in Maalaala Mo Kaya.