Eye-D - for visually impaired girls

Out of about 150,000 severely visually impaired (V.I.) girls in India, only about 2% or about 3000 complete school education. A V.I. girl child is 4-times less likely to attend school than a V.I. boy child. These 2% who complete school education rarely go for higher education due to lack of awareness around options.

Eye-D mobile app helps a visually impaired person to read books and complete courses with just a smartphone. It assists in navigation too. It is used by 80,000+ V.I. users in 160 countries. 

We want to bring a smartphone and Eye-D app to these 2% V.I. girls in age group 6-14 years and still in school. More stories of successful V.I. girls post school will provide better confidence in potential of V.I. girl child and her parents. Visually impaired community has strong network effect of super-achievers and focussing on these 2% girls might solve for 98%.

With child education in itself a big problem, education for visually impaired  (V.I) child takes a back seat and especially V.I. girl child is marginalized. Out of approximately 150,000 girl child with severe vision impairment, just about 3000 attend basic schooling in India. The biggest reason is lack of awareness around career options available and the advantage of education. For girl child, safety becomes a hassle and most of the parents, if they are not well-educated or financially sound, prefer either not enrolling girl child in school or limit their mobility if they complete school. They are almost never seen as bread-winners of family.

In 1928, India saw first woman Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Officer. It took 91 years for first blind woman IAS officer to take charge in 2019. And it made news. 

There are no clear pathways and preparation patterns defined for the visually impaired child to succeed in career and hence the stigma around education for V.I. girl child. There are many non-profits in India taking great steps to ensure education for V.I. children but not focussing especially on girls will mean girls might still be 4 times less likely to succeed than boys a decade later. 

Our current solution(EYE-D App) helps V.I. in three major areas namely identification, learning and navigation. Using our current App VIs can identify objects & detect colors around them, read text from printed books, PDF etc. and navigate to nearby places independently like ATMs, Bus stops etc. 

The proposed extended solution to impact V.I. girls would be two fold - 

1. First and foremost we will spread awareness among the families of V.I. girls. For this we will leverage our existing partnership with leading non-profits. 

2. Our app platform provides an all encompassing solution like accessible online libraries, course materials and guidance & mentorship by V.I. achievers. Apart from this the solution would also provide a social network for VIs within App wherein they can interact, solve each others problems, and get a coordinator who will address and help them wherever required. 

Our solution serves all V.I. girls in India who are going to school to help get into colleges. The idea for this emanated as we were working for VIs through our existing EYE-D App. We observed that the population vs representation of V.I. girls was way less than that of V.I. boys. Upon further research we found out that only 2% of the total V.I. girls in India attend school. Disability and illiteracy has resulted in them being left far behind. 

To uplift the situation of V.I. girls, their families need awareness, the girls need motivation and thereby easy access to resources. Our two fold approach aims at spreading awareness through various non-profit partners, our extended App platform also has stories of V.I. achievers to motivate them, that they too can achieve something big. And to help them, provides resources like accessible books, study materials, knowledge of pathways so that they also build a successful career for themselves and lead a self reliant life.   

Under 'learning for girls and women', this is how we aim to provide access to quality learning opportunities to marginalised girls. 

The problem is V.I. girls have been left far behind when it comes to education. This has resulted in them being socially and economically backward. Only a dismal 2% (3000) of 150000 V.I. girls in India attend school. Our solution aims to build a successful career for these 3000 girls by providing them with an all encompassing learning platform in our EYE-D App. They will then further become a source of inspiration and motivation for other 98% V.I. girls. 

We used the most common, yet powerful, solution - A Smartphone. Eye-D app is like a swiss-knife that eliminates the need for a variety of hardware devices to solve a number of problems. Due to conventional wisdom of keeping away smartphones from kids, visually impaired kids are not able to leverage this tool to the best of ability.

Although there are some non-profits working towards solving girl child education problem like Nanhi Pari and Deepalay among others but they are still unable to cater to V.I. girls. The reason that makes us unique is that we are a hybrid and aim to empower through both technology and traditional means. 

All smartphones, whether android or iOS, are equipped with "accessibility" features for the disabled. Using "accessibility" features for the visually impaired on a smartphone, it is possible to use all features of a smartphone by not looking at it and just touching the screen and listening.

We are leveraging the accessibility features on smartphone to help the VIs access and use our app effectively. The App utilises cloud based AI to help user in identifying objects, reading documents etc. The App also provides a host of offline features like offline reading that caters to the need of users. We have consciously used cloud services to minimise the device dependancy and provide similar & seamless experience. The extended solution would also inculcate accessible online libraries, course materials etc. 

For more such stories on how EYE-D through its sophisticated technology has impacted VIs visit:  https://eye-d.in/eye-d-heroes

Our proposed theory of change:

Eye-D app has benefitted over 80000 people in 160 countries in the last 5 years. In this current pilot that we are doing, we are working with 48 V.I. students from different age groups. In 1 year, we plan to learn and reach about 100 girl child beneficiaries to continue making tweaks to the program. In 5 years, we aim to reach all V.I. girl child currently enrolled in schools in India, through partnerships. During this time, we also plan to launch in other countries as we did with Nepal and Bangladesh.

1 year Goal: Bring 100 VI girls onboard and empower them and their family through awareness, motivation and rich learning resources.  

Key activities: 1. Organise awareness drive in partnership with leading non-profits. 

2. The App at this stage would have all existing EYE-D Features along with online library, mentors, study material, motivational videos and opportunities that lie ahead.   

3 year goal: Supporting 3000 VI girls

Key activities: 1. Utilise all entry endpoints to reach 3000 VI girls like community leaders and existing regional coordinators, existing users,  partners. 

2. App platform at this stage would also provide an interactive forum wherein stakeholders can interact and solve each others problems. 

2. Garner support for the project through CSR funds and Govt. initiatives.   

In 5 years: Create a ripple effect within the community by creating success stories among these 3000 VI girls. 

We are anticipating the following barriers:

• Driving effective awareness campaigns with partner non-profits. 
• Over the period of 3 years, attaining financial sustainability to support all 3000 VI girls with a myriad of resources. 
• After 5 years, reaching a larger audience base of VI girls, especially those who are technologically backward. 

We will take the following steps to counter the barriers: 

• Stringent training of ground staff and scientific monitoring & evaluation processes for awareness campaigns. 
• Measuring the progress, and highlighting the impact that has been created in the lives of VI girls at regular intervals, only to have compelling stories for CSR projects and government tie-ups. 
• By the time, we spend 5 years, we will take learnings and analytical data to help us reach a wider audience. Moreover a deeper baseline survey would be conducted to reach V.I. girls who reach at the bottom of the pyramid. 

Not Applicable

2 co-founder

4 Full time staff

3 interns

2 contractors

The two founding members of our team come from the technology background and have been the evangelist towards building various cutting-edge yet affordable tech solutions for the blind community. Our team further has further tech resources in terms of developers, AI & AR specialists who have been the driving force for EYE-D in the past 5 years.   

Apart from this our team has a disability expert who has been working with the blind community over 6 years, all over the world. And was the one responsible to carry out EYE-D Project with Barcelona City council to make its streets safer and accessible for V.I. community in the city. 

Our marketing ninja who has been overlooking digital and offline marketing for EYE-D has been responsible for EYE-D's success, benefiting 80000 V.I. users all around the globe. The marketing ninja also ensures various partnerships, CSR funding along with two contractors. 

We currently have partnerships with:

• NUDGE foundation: With Nudge Foundation we are piloting the extended solution within the EYE-D App for V.I. girls.  
• NASSCOM: NASSCOM is the founder of program called '10000 startups'. Being a trade association for IT and Business process, NASSCOM helps towards partnering with various Govt. bodies, along with introducing us to who's who of the corporate sector, for any help deemed necessary.
• Millennium Alliance(MA): Being a conglomerate of top corporate and govt. organisations across the globe, MA has been our partner for various projects, granting funds for each one of them. 

Although EYE-D App has App sales as one of its primary revenue streams, as we extend the feature of App for V.I. girls, we will provide them the entire app with all its features for free. 

Collaborating with various govt. bodies, partnering with various corporate organisations for CSR funds(India mandates 2% of profit spends on CSR activity for organisations) and various awards and grants. 

As we are running the pilots, we already have a few organisations in line to support the project at scale. 

Our EYE-D App which has been running for 5 years already has a profitable model in place. Our extended solution within EYE-D App, along with its existing features would be provided free to all V.I. girls in India. 

For the 3000 V.I. girls in India already going to school, we have sponsored partners in line through whom we would be mass distributing at a cost of $100 per App. As we grow to help more V.I. girls, we would partner with various state disability govt. bodies to ensure that all the V.I. girls in India are catered to. 

We have been working with the V.I. community globally since 2014 and have developed impactful tech products that is loved by the community. However now through this extension we are taking a shift towards hybrid model which would not only include technology but also other type of interventions to impact V.I. girls in India. This is where MIT Solve can play a key role in helping us to identify apt processes and better define metrics to timely measure the effective execution of the initiative. 

This is our transition from a tech based firm to a hybrid organisation as we aim to impact the lives of V.I. girls in India. To effectively carryout the hybrid model - the process required, the balance that needs to be maintained solve can be a great guiding force. 

As we would expand to the wider audience of V.I. girls in India the challenges would increase as things like remoteness of the area, illiteracy would come into picture. To better impact the segment we will need to identify and smoothly execute a multi fold approach. 

Being recognised by an organization as prestigious as MIT solve at the global level will further pave way or open doors for various collaborations (govt. and corporate) to sponsor the initiative for V.I. girls in India. 

We would like to take help of MIT faculty to better our research approach, make it as extensive as possible and to gain answers to right questions through research so that we are able to help V.I. girls in India who have been left behind for decades. 

We would also like to take help of organizations like Vodafone Americas Foundation to better impact the life of V.I. girls. 

Visually Impaired girls in India have been left behind for decades. The problem solvers or social organizations either cater to V.I. segment or for girls in India. However V.I. girls being a very marginalised section are left behind both by organizations who cater to V.I. or those who cater to girls. It's time to particularly address and solve the problem of this specific segment or they will never be able to live of dignity and self reliance. 

Even today only a nominal fraction (2% of 150000) of V.I. girls have access to basic education in India of which only a handful are able to have an established career in today's highly competitive world. There are multiple challenges which makes things even more challenging for them like low digital literacy, limited awareness about available career options and unavailability of required learning resources. With our initiative and engaging platform we are committed not only to provide easy access to resources but also help discover and follow the desired career paths by connecting them to V.I. achievers thus not only motivating them but also providing them with accessible resources through a single platform, only to help them achieve success.