Innovations that Support Children with Disabilities in Low-Resource Areas

Children with disabilities remain among the most marginalized in access to education, a challenge further compounded by poverty, inaccessible environments, social isolation, and conflict and crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4 calls for inclusive and equitable quality education for all by 2030, more must be done—and quickly—to ensure learning environments are designed to be accessible, with appropriate tools and resources for children with disabilities to realize their full potential.

Developmental disabilities such as autism and intellectual disability significantly impact the lives of affected children, families, and their social networks. These and other developmental vulnerabilities require additional support beyond those of parenting.

Significantly, there are several organizations and students who are working on technology-driven products that can empower the specially-abled.

1. Mobility India

Mobility India, a Bangalore-based organization, founded by Riyaz H, Soikat Ghosh Moulic, Trivikram, Indra Sena Reddy, and Shiva Kumar has designed a low-cost, prefabricated twin device to help correct the posture for children with cerebral palsy.

The USP of the device is that the same product can be used as a sitting chair and as a standing frame. Further, priced at approximately Rs. 5,000, these products also require little space.

2. Books in regional language

A partnership between USAID, World Vision, and the Australian Government is funding the creation of thousands of accessible e-books in 16 of the most underserved languages, including sign languages.

These books will be developed in accessible formats—including audio narration, image description, and sign language video—and uploaded to the Global Digital Library, a web-based platform that makes high-quality early learning books and resources available for free use on the web, mobile, or for print.

3. Quadio devices

Quadio Devices Pvt Ltd, a hearing care provider in India, launched a hearing app that replicates as a mobile-based hearing solution complete with all the features of a conventional hearing tool. The Q+ app, a free application, is accessible, controllable, and customizable.

The Q+ app harnesses the processing power of a smartphone to enable it to be used as a complete and fully-functional hearing machine. It is designed to maximize the listening experience based on the results of a simple interactive hearing test.

The app also gives the user the ability to control and customize sound quality by intelligently enhancing hearing sounds and speech.

4. Text to braille

Students from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, have devised a letter-to-letter braille converter that prints the recognised letter in the braille cell. The product consists of a small cuboid that can be held with three fingers (thumb, index, and middle) and placed on a printed text.

The user has to slide the cuboid on the text to read it. The team hopes that through this device, any ordinary hard copy of a book or newspaper can be instantly read by the person. The device usage can also be expanded and enhanced based on user needs and employability.

5. Vibe

Vibe is a wearable device that vibrates for acoustic sounds around a person with hearing impairment. It features a multitude of sound patterns that are recognized using a microphone and voice recognition modules.

It will alert the hearing impaired about a specific sound such as a doorbell, an alarm, or a crying child, and will be compact and wearable as a watch. It is a simple way of providing vibration input for the pre-identified surrounding sounds, with each such sound corresponding to a specific vibration and blinking LEDs to alert the user.