Asna Javed, despite being born without both her arms is a successful lead developer advocate at IBM. Her journey has been a challenging one but she has met every obstacle head-on. In the past, she was frequently questioned that how she performs coding, since using hands is a requirement, she would in return say code is executed by our brains, and the absence of her upper limbs has never stopped her.
Her family has groomed her to be completely independent, as she performs all of her daily tasks and house chores without giving in to the fact that she is specially abled. Through the years, her family has been a major support system for her. She had spent a very normal childhood and is very close to her siblings. One of her questioning moments in life was when her own teacher questioned her mother that if they would continue the studies of Asna. Her mother without a second thought answered positively, and they don’t see a reason why she should discontinue her studies.
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“A teacher who has been teaching me from a very early stage is doubting my capabilities made me realized that people do doubt my skills, just because I don’t have arms, as a normal person won’t be asked this question!”
Despite breaking all the stereotypes, Asna still struggles with people looking past her disability and consider her skills and talent. She has emphasized the point that to perform certain tasks we need our mind to act on them rather than relying on our body. Furthermore, people now should normalize the notion that a person’s credibility should be based upon his or her skills and talent instead of how the person appears physically. Asna aims to bring more women into the tech industry, as she feels there is less input from the women in the field of technology and does wish the tech industry to be more male-centric.
Source: VOA Urdu
