Vision Empower

Vision Empower is in its third year of operation. We are currently working with 30 schools in the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Tripura and Delhi. The interventions are being piloted in these states and have received positive reviews and acceptance from the community and state governments. We require funds to implement these initiatives and provide mechanisms to sustain the operations and ensure inclusive education for children with visual impairment across India. Technology Infrastructure and capacity building exercises across the country in both urban and rural settings require funds. This prize would be very beneficial in providing accessible content and affordable technology which are created by Vision Empower and its partners to the beneficiaries. Funds are required for research on essential technology solutions to ensure sustained innovation on accessible content and affordable assistive technologies for equitable and inclusive education. The prize would help Vision Empower to achieve these objectives and meet the overall vision of providing accessible STEM education to students and teachers with visual impairment. It can act as a model framework for a sustainable program in all countries in the global south.

Lack of accessible and inclusive pedagogical content and processes to study STEM subjects leads to under-representation of the community of persons with visual impairment in STEM-related careers. Vision Empower, incubated at IIIT Bangalore in 2017, was created to address the challenges of accessible STEM education for persons with visual impairment in India. Co-founded by Vidhya Y, who was visually impaired since birth, the goals of the founding team was to co-create the pedagogical tools using action research-led approach, drawing upon the experiences of the user community. Vidhya Y was the topper and gold-medalist in the MSc in Digital Society at IIIT Bangalore and yet STEM-related jobs were not available for her. This inspired her to form Vision Empower with Supriya Dey and Prof Amit Prakash, as the three jointly decided to work on a portfolio to address the root cause of this social inequity. The findings of the initial research pointed to a lack of accessible content, lack of capability to teach STEM subjects among teachers, and a lack of affordable technology solutions to support accessible and inclusive education. Addressing these challenges became the mission of Vision Empower. ( www.visionempowertrust.org )

India houses about one-third of the world’s total blind population (WHO, 2018 Report) with a majority residing in the rural parts of the country. As per the Indian Census of 2011, there are approximately 7.7 Lakhs of visually impaired children studying in school. The biggest challenge the visually challenged community faces while pursuing STEM-related careers are - 

1. Lack of Accessible Content and Inadequate Access to Braille Books
2. Lack of Capability to Teach STEM subjects among Teachers
3. Lack of Affordable Technology Solutions to support Accessible and Inclusive Education

Additionally, the high cost of printing and logistical issues skews the distribution of Braille books in urban and rural pockets. Lack of accessible content in the second language acts as a barrier to children who read books in local languages. This overall affects the literacy and the aptitude of understanding STEM concepts.

At Vision Empower (VE), we have a team of highly qualified and experienced researchers and teachers who work closely with schools, teachers, and children to understand their needs and work-around solutions best suited for them. VE helps the schools in providing learning materials, teacher trainings required to disseminate STEM education in a more interesting and fun manner to children.

Vision Empower (VE) leverages its on-ground presence in schools to devise and implement its initiatives. 

1. The final solutions deployed are a result of a research-based initiative undergoing an agile process of incorporating the feedback given by students and teachers. 
2. The highly qualified team of teachers and researchers continuously work on developing innovative pedagogical processes derived from well-established frameworks such as  - National Curricular Framework 2005 and New Education Policy 2020. These include:
   1. Standardizing a new format of Braille Books
   2. Curation of Teacher Training methods and content
   3. Devising sustainable program implementation strategies for wider dissemination of initiatives and content
3. While the focus is to make education more fun and play, VE researches around affordable assistive technologies to make the students and teachers better equipped to learn and understand STEM concepts. VE has developed:
   1. Subodha - An online-accessible open-source Learning Management System for teachers and students.
   2. Hexis - An Electronic Braille Book reader to access and read and reading materials in any language on demand. 
   3. Tactile Audio Gallery - An Electronic Interpreter to make students understand 2D images, graphs, charts diagrams, etc.

- Education

- Literacy

- Numeracy

- Access to content at par with sighted peers/persons

- Equitable society  (UN SDGs)