IT’S now been about 12 years since Rosemarie ‘Rosie’ Ramitt has been dealing with a vision disability that completely changed her life, but she’s allowed nothing to keep her from going after great things and making a difference in the lives of others.

In fact, she has been working to form a group – which might be the first of its kind — that will specifically cater to the needs of women with disabilities. At the moment, she is smoothing out the rough edges of the project in hopes that she will be able to launch it this very month.

Rosie believes that this may be the perfect way for her to continue making a contribution to the disability community, especially as women with disabilities have very little representation in certain important sectors.

“The group will be focused on different areas affecting women like sexual reproductive health, sexual rights, education and training and capacity building, because I want women to be advocates so it wouldn’t only be me or a handful of other women in society; it will be an entire group,” Rosie expressed in an interview with the Pepperpot Magazine.

Rosie, of Mon Repos Village, East Coast Demerara, was leading a normal, healthy life when she suddenly lost proper sight; she was just 13 years old. At one point, she was able to see bright colours and discern when an object or person was in front of her, but her eye condition has gotten worse, so that she is hardly able to tell anymore. Rosie has a condition called Panuveitis, where her immune system basically attacks her eyes and results in inflammation in different parts of them.

Having graduated from the Cyril Potter College of Education in 2017, Rosie has a special interest in contributing more to education in the disability community, and has therefore steered her path towards qualifying herself in blind education. In 2018, she graduated with an Associate Degree in Social Work from the University of Guyana (UG), and is now wrapping up her Bachelor’s Degree in Education.

Speaking about the need for the women’s group, Rosie said it will be an arm of the Guyana Council of Organisations for Persons with Disabilities and provide tremendous benefits to women in disability, who have to deal with the regular issues that other women face, topped with having to also cope with an infirmity.

Disability and Technology
Rosie has also been doing her share to provide practical assistance to those in the disability community, at times on a voluntary basis. As an assistant technology trainer, she works with individuals who are blind, teaching them how to use JAWS – a screen reading software – and their computers.
For the past seven years, in addition to studying at UG, she’s been helping youths in disability to learn technology. She would kindly assist individuals who may have acquired a new device to install the relevant software and teach them how to browse the internet, send an email, and submit work to their schools online.

Explaining how it is that she manages to teach Information Technology despite her visual disability, she said: “The screen-reading software helps us read everything that is typed and that’s how I am able to know if they’ve done the correct thing. Now they are working online and I put them in breakout rooms on Zoom and then I would move between rooms and have them work. There’s an option in screen-sharing to share audio and once they activate that, I am able to hear their computer and what they’re doing and be able to guide them.”

As tedious as it may sound to navigate through breakout rooms, Rosie makes nothing a problem. “I know my computer extremely well. It’s really just a matter of listening to what you’re doing and then moving accordingly.”

With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, she started off teaching the children how to use Skype, because she was unfamiliar with Zoom. However, as she got the hang of Zoom, she recorded a tutorial session and sent it to her students on WhatsApp, so that they were able to try it out on their computer. “Once they join the meeting with me on Zoom, I was able to show them how to activate other features.”