Executive Summary

Project Host:

Fellows:

Bethany Fong, Social Entrepreneur Fellow
Jeanine Grütter, Research Fellow
Melissa Hogenboom, Research Fellow
Lindsay Kincaid, Team Lead, Social Entrepreneur Fellow

Introduction

The level of Braille literacy rate around the world is extremely low at less than 10% worldwide, and less than 1% in India. Thinkerbell Labs has a unique product (Annie) that teaches braille literacy - it is the world's first self-learning braille device.

Read the Report

Organization’s role & strength

Founded in 2016, Thinkerbell Labs is a company based in India who specialise in braille literacy. They are a tech-driven organisation building innovative, accessible solutions in efforts to make education inclusive. Their current focus is to make products that help improve learning outcomes for the visually impaired. They have developed Annie - a self-learning Braille literacy device that helps the visually impaired learn to read, write, and type in braille through multimodal content.

Need Summary

Thinkerbell Labs is a tech company from India specialising in braille literacy. They seek to understand the metrics that can be tracked via Thinkerbell's analytics platform Helios.

LEAP Fellows created a report where they outlined evidence around braille literacy and provided steps that Thinkerbell Labs can take in order to develop a comprehensive research strategy, especially regarding assessing braille literacy and validating and further developing benchmarks for braille literacy in India. Finally, Fellows led a Theory of Change workshop to help Thinkerbell build a comprehensive TOC.

Solution summary & next steps

The Thinkerbell Labs team is advised to allocate substantial time to read and comprehend the report Fellows provided, the Summary of the Literature Review as well as the detailed research papers cited within. This foundational understanding is essential before progressing to actionized subsequent next steps as outlined in the report.