Info Tech Workshops Designed for Deaf Now at NTID

Two information technology workshops designed for and available only to deaf and hard-of-hearing people are being offered at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), a college of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

The five-day workshops, PC Hardware Maintenance and Repair, offered Feb. 26—March 2, and Object-Oriented Programming Using Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, offered April 30—May 4, are part of the Deaf Initiative in Information Technology (DIIT), supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, and are held in NTID's state-of-the-art DIIT classrooms. Additional workshops are planned for 2001 and 2002.

"Having the perspective of other deaf adults while learning new software and technology was very beneficial," said Patrick Murray, a product tester at IBM in Austin, Texas, who attended the first DIIT workshop, Creating Web Sites with FrontPage 2000. "Each participant shared their experiences from the work world and built a solid network of people who could support each other in the future."

Registration is limited to 12 attendees for each workshop, and will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. The cost of the weeklong workshop is $550. For information on the workshops or to register, contact the program's e-mail address at diit@rit.edu or visit the Web site at http://www.rit.edu/diit.

The first and largest technological college in the world for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, NTID, one of seven colleges of RIT, offers educational programs and access and support services to the 1,100 deaf and hard-of-hearing students from around the world who study, live and socialize with 13,000 hearing students on RIT's Rochester, N.Y., campus. Web address: http://www.rit.edu/NTID.