Young Indian graduates opening new world of learning for visually challenged

NEW DELHI

For two Indian students, celebrating World Braille Day on Tuesday has taken on added meaning after they won the 2021 Ericsson Innovation Awards competition last month for creating a digital Braille.

Their team created a solution that provides equal educational opportunities for the visually impaired around the world. Through this innovation, they aspire to set up an educational technology startup to educate and help visually challenged students.

Chinmaya Naik, 24, and Nikita Kumari, 22, alumni of G.H. Raisoni College of Engineering in Nagpur, central India, put their engineering knowledge to use to create “BlisCare,” an innovation that digitizes Braille.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the duo realized that the switch to online education was a big disadvantage for visually handicapped students.

“This initiative will be helpful in providing equal educational opportunities for the visually impaired because it will give them access to all content available online and offline in Braille format via a touch-based system, which is currently done by converting text to Braille and then printing it with a Braille printer, and the cost of printing and resources associated with it is very high,” Chinmaya told Anadolu Agency.

“Therefore, the content available to the visually challenged for education is limited. But with digital Braille, they will get any content that we use in offline or online mode in any language in real time at their fingertips.”

The young graduates will receive the top prize of €25,000 (US$28,392) and will be invited to an exclusive virtual student roundtable with Arthur B. McDonald, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2015.

The Ericsson Innovation Awards is a global competition that gives university students the opportunity to turn their ideas into reality. More than 2,100 students from across the world submitted inventive ideas to answer Ericsson’s challenge last year.

Chinmaya and Nikita are revolutionizing reading and education for the visually challenged through BlisCare. The education technology firm will be a multilinguistic platform that digitizes Braille for users, thereby opening a new world of books and learning for those who cannot see.

Educational content available for visually impaired limited

“BlisCare aims to provide affordable digital classroom solutions for blind students with a Digital Braille Display System or Braille Tablet that can replicate any text or graphical diagram into standard Braille at an affordable cost and makes unlimited content available, online and offline, which is currently not accessible to the visually impaired community,” said Chinmaya.

He recalled that he was fretful and edgy while waiting for the results of the Ericsson Innovation Awards.

“The journey of the Ericsson Innovation Awards started with a small step, as we never had long-term planning regarding the event. For every level, we worked very hard and always gave more than asked which could help support our submission, but within limits mentioned,” he said.

“The result and winning moment was a byproduct of all our efforts over several months and passing each level, and it was a beautiful, dream-like moment, but at the same time a motivation to build upon developments.”

Coming a long way

Chinmaya said he used to see differently-abled people begging for money for survival in marketplaces and stations, which made him and his team dive into researching possible solutions for helping this community in any way.

So he used his engineering education platform for this cause, and he and Nikita have come a long way from looking for resources to support the visually impaired. They failed at the beginning, but later a few approaches worked for them, and they tested and created a prototype for the visually impaired, which eventually led them to a positive direction and thus, with teamwork and a vision, BlisCare was born.

Chinmaya and Nikita want to provide the visually impaired with education and employment opportunities to bring them into fair competition with those who are not physically challenged. They dream of a holistic, sustainable and equitable society.