Ready, Willing and Able : Ventura College: A special program is helping nearly 600 students get an education despite physical handicaps and learning disabilities.

At first glance, the classroom at Ventura College looks like any other where students work diligently away at computer terminals.

Except for the click-click-click of word-processor keys, there is little noise. Most of the 20 or so people in the room are too busy for idle conversation.

This is Ventura College’s High-Tech Center for the Disabled, where students with problems ranging from learning disorders to blindness to paralysis are using the latest educational technology to overcome their handicaps.

Nearly 600 people--more than one in every 25 Ventura College students--are involved in the college’s program for the disabled. Besides the high-tech facility, the program includes tutoring, job counseling and a classroom where students work to improve reading, writing and other skills.

Oxnard and Moorpark colleges, the other campuses in the Ventura County Community College District, also are helping the disabled. About 275 students are enrolled in their programs.

As they progress, the 593 people enrolled in the Ventura College program are mainstreamed into classes throughout the college.

“Often, we assign a trained person to assist them,” said Orlene G. Murphy, coordinator of disabled students programs and services. “For instance, we’ll provide someone who will ‘sign’ a professor’s lecture for a deaf student.”

Mainstreaming is a concern of practically everyone involved in the college’s services for the disabled.

“Our ultimate goal is to help people become self-supporting,” Murphy said. “Two of our staff members spend much of their time finding jobs for our graduates.”

Murphy estimated that the 14-year-old program, which she has headed from its inception, places about 25 graduates a year at such full-time jobs as clerical work, mechanics, maintenance work, bookkeeping, and messenger and food services.

“Private industry in Ventura County is good about hiring the disabled,” said Gene Thanos, an instructor and job developer in the program. “We’ve had good success with civil-service jobs too. There are federal and state laws that exempt the disabled from having to take some exams.”

Murphy said the program, including staff salaries, costs about $675,000 a year, almost all of it provided by state funding.

“I’m disabled myself, by the way,” Murphy said, explaining that her right hand is not fully developed. “It’s never been a handicap, really, but let’s say I’m conscious of it. I tend to use my pockets a lot.”

Vivian Lockard, the program’s head sign-language interpreter, placed her fingers on the palm of Chris Cook, who is blind and almost totally deaf. She tapped out a message, introducing him to a visitor.

“I’m glad to know you,” Cook said with some difficulty.

Using a small keyboard-like gadget, the visitor typed a reply, which is printed for Cook in Braille.

Asked what he was doing, Cook--who has some hearing thanks to a device that has been surgically inserted into his inner ear--said he is learning to use a computer with the aid of raised symbols that Lockard has placed on the keys.

“I’m thinking of becoming a computer programmer someday,” Cook said.

“He could do it,” Lockard said. “He’s very bright.”

Dee Konczal, who teaches the class officially called “Adaptive Computer Access and Keyboarding Skills,” said the biggest problem in teaching disabled students is that, “when they first come in here, they think they’re no good.”

Konczal said she builds her students’ confidence by teaching them first to use computers and then to use software to learn such basic skills as math, spelling, reading and writing.

Konczal pointed out Susan Stork, who was typing rapidly. “She’s an ABI student. That stands for acquired brain injury. She was injured in an auto accident.

“When she first joined us, she didn’t think she’d ever use her hands again. Now she’s typing very well.”

A blind student used a word processor with the aid of Dectalk, a speech synthesizer that reads back to him what he has typed.

Keith Bonchek, 28, president of the college’s organization of disabled students, displayed an outline of a book he is writing--”Be-Able Networking Directory of Southern California.”

“It’s a directory of products, goods and services available to the disabled,” he said. “I’m learning desktop publishing, so I’ll be able to compile and publish it all by myself.”

If the book sells, Bonchek said, he may expand to larger markets.

Murphy puts the number of disabled in the general population at 12% to 15%. Besides physical disabilities, she includes learning impairments.

Bonchek has launched his publishing project, he said, “even though I’m triple-disabled. I have cerebral palsy, I’m hard of hearing, and I have a learning disability.”

In the learning-skills classroom, Larry Falxa, who in 1987 was named National Learning Disabled Instructor of the Year, was teaching sentence structure to reading and writing students.

One of them, Ruben Gonzales, 37, had to leave the construction industry after suffering a serious back injury in a fall.

“Even before that, I had a learning disability,” Gonzales said. “I want to get into welding, possibly in management. If I could improve my reading, I could get my high school diploma. That would help me find a job.”

In the courtyard of the Disabled Students Center, Jeff Lee, 26, sat in his motorized wheelchair, enjoying the sun with other students. Lee has been a quadriplegic since his teens as a result of an auto accident.

“For the first four years after the accident,” he said, “I just sat around the house. I couldn’t come to grips with what had happened.”

Then, five years ago, Lee enrolled in Ventura College’s program for the disabled. Though a philosophy major, he said he has taken a number of English classes and has decided to become a writer.

“Mainly, I write short stories. But I’m also writing for a computer magazine. I review new software as it comes on the market.

“I realize breaking into writing can be difficult, but I’ve made a start, and now, at least, I know what I want to do.

“I don’t just sit around the house anymore.”