bengaluru when mobile phones and plastic chairs became popular thousands of visually challenged persons were suddenly out of jobsand there were very few sectors in which physically challenged persons especially the visually challenged could find work many sold lottery tickets others managed coin phone booths and some others fixed cane furniture recalls paul muddha founder of snehadeep trust for disabled which recently won the state award for best institutions of excellence in recognition of its services to differently abled people with plastic chairs becoming popular suddenly no one wanted cane chairs when mobile phones took over the market coin booths went out of existence lotteries were banned i saw my friends losing their livelihood and with it their independence muddha says however technology that closed some doors for the physically challenged also opened some others for them but adapting this was still a problem especially for the visually impaired we decided to start this organization because we realized charity was not going to help them we wanted more the three founders of the trust muddha k mohan and shrimannarayana are also visually challenged the trust has placed over 350 visually challenged persons in various jobs including in banks and mncs awareness has definitely helped people use the 3 reservation but it is still hard for a visually challenged person to get a job companies prefer a speech or hearing impaired person or a physically challenged person over a visually impaired person we are trying to get organizations to give the visually impaired a chance to show how capable they are of doing anything that anyone else does muddha says the efforts include buying software that help visually impaired people listen to computer instead of seeing it students from all over the country are studying in snehadeep trust volunteers who visit the centre help college students by reading out textbooks to them this is either translated to braille or recorded for future reference the trust gets textbooks printed in braille and give it to students for free thanks to sponsors who provide funds to buy the special paper to print braille each textbook costs rs 1000 and a majority of visually impaired students cannot afford it he says