Startups in the country are taking steps towards creating affordable assistive technology
Words: Vandana Devi Images: Various Sources
Assistive technology is a space that is just growing in India. Dominated by mostly western products, these devices and equipments are hardly affordable. However, some young startups in the country are trying to open up the market by producing and selling efficient and affordable devices.
Gunjan Gupta was 20 years old and was trying to figure out what to work on for his final year engineering project. An afternoon at the Blind People Association in Ahmedabad gave him the perfect idea. He started working on ‘Tellmate’, a wearable pair of glasses which processes images for visually impaired persons and converts it into sound and whispers it into the ears using hearing aids. He plans to distribute the same through Blind people’s organisations, NGOs and rehabilitation centres.
Surabhi Srivastava and Shyam Shah at IIT Bombay invented a tablet for the visually impaired called ‘Braille Me’ which costs just Rs. 20,000. It is a device on which content can be read and typed. You can also send emails and WhatsApp by typing these messages in English braille which will then get converted into English characters. They want to go to the market through government and education channels as awareness is quite low and initial training would be required.
FJ Typer is a touch typing tutor. It is a software application that helps to train children with poor vision. The software gives an audio prompt if correct, and tells them which letter to type next, if wrong.