IBM Wins National Award For Empowering People With Disabilities

IBM has received two prestigious awards—National Award by the Government of India and Helen Keller Award for year 2009, given by the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP)—for its commitment to creating an inclusive environment at workplace, especially for people with disabilities.

The National Award, given by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India, was conferred upon IBM for its technology innovation, Spoken Web, recognizing its immense potential for improving the life of people with disability. The Shell-NCPEDP Helen Keller award was given to IBM for demonstrating policies and practices that promote equal employment opportunity for people with disabilities.

IBM received the Government of India's National Award in categories of Best Employer and Accessibility Innovation in 2008 and 2007 respectively. This year, three IBM employees—Hari Raghavan, Murali C Sharma, and Madhu Bala Sharma—also received this prestigious award in individual categories. Raghavan and Sharma earned the award in the Best Employee category, while Madhu Bala Sharma earned the honor in the Role Model category.

"IBM recruited its first employee with disability almost a century ago and has a long history of creating an inclusive work environment. We take pride in promoting accessibility through innovative products and unique services that can drive growth for the company, individuals, and the larger society. We are honored to receive these recognitions for the third consecutive year," said Shanker Annaswamy, Managing Director, IBM India.

The Spoken Web technology helps people, who have little or no literacy or are visually impaired; get the benefits of the World Wide Web by creating a parallel system similar to the Internet. This voice enabled technology enables physically challenged people to have access and share information, do business transactions, or create social networks by creating VoiceSites through their mobile or landline phones.