Origin of the initiative

Initiative

Then he visited Housatonic College in the city of Bridgeport, CT and there they told him that the institution does not have any really working adaptive mechanism for blind people, and he was immediately rejected. Some time later he decided to visit Gateway Community College, and although they did not have any educational pattern to support a blind student either, that place proposed to develop techniques on the fly.

Mr. Hincapié agreed. A few days later everything turned into chaos, because Gateway assigned him different assistants and also the duration and places of the classes varied. These changes generated complete instability of New Haven and there, the rejection was just immediate. So Mr. Hincapié in his own home decided little by little to develop study elements and techniques that would allow him to survive in his life as a student and when he was ready he enrolled in Middlesex Community College to study algebra and at the time they stated, that they did not have any formal mechanism to teach a blind person, some topics such as; the use of a calculator.

Mr. Hincapié responded that he had already created some didactic boards to handle the issue and more complex mathematical topics to understand and in that place, he obtained the highest grade among his classmates. This led to B.E.S.B hiring him as an algebra and literature tutor, exclusively for people with visual impairments. These episodes have inclusion programs used in Colombia.

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After Mr. Iván Hincapié went blind, as a result of having been shot in the head for not waiting to give up his car to someone who was robbing him. A few years later, he decided to go to Southern Connecticut State University to obtain a degree in general studies. This university had almost no functional mechanism for the adaptation of a blind student, the only help they could provide was a computer with the Jaws program and someone who could take notes during the classes. At the end of each class, that person delivered these notes to Mr. Hincapié. This support scheme is certainly very superficial; just to highlight something, Mr. Hincapie asked if the university had some mechanism so that a blind person could learn geometry? The response he received is that this matter is not the responsibility of the government institutions that work with blind people, specifically BEST. Evidently, Mr. Hincapié took the same question to that office, and the answer he received is that this matter is the responsibility of the university where the disabled person is studying.

Scenarios like this were repeated several times and caused Mr. Hincapié to resign. Some time later he enrolled in the university of Connecticut and there they only offered him someone who could take notes in his classes and then an assistant would give them to him at the end of the class. Then Mr. Hincapié asked about how he could read the content of those sheets. The response he received was that this matter is not the responsibility of the university.