Annie

Braille literacy rates across the globe are abysmal - less than 10% in the US, less than 4% in the UK, and less than 1% in India. India has the most visually impaired people in the world. This presents a serious problem; without braille education, the quality of life for the visually impaired is significantly decreased. Without braille education, blind people are often unable to understand or use written communication. This consequently leads to higher dependency on sighted peers and decrease in employability. Those in poverty bear the brunt of the negative effects of blindness. Visual Impairment like many disabilities, along with lack of literacy leads to unemployment, which furthers the cycle of poverty and low standard of living.

The current primary education tools include wooden blocks, marbles, and plastic slates, with continuous 1:1 teacher supervision. The lack of special educators, insufficient STEM content in Braille, and lack of general awareness have contributed to  inefficient rehabilitation among the visually impaired. The total annual economic burden due to the visually impaired in India is estimated at USD 77 billion of which USD 22 billion is due to childhood blindness.This issue is compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic with schools closed and visually impaired children having no access to education at all. The efficiency of Braille learning can be improved drastically. It is essential to address this issue as there is a very high correlation between Braille literacy and employment among the visually impaired.

Annie is the World’s First Braille Literacy device that helps the visually impaired learn to read, write, and type in Braille, on their own through interactive audio-guided content in vernacular languages. Annie allows for easy monitoring and evaluation of student progress via Helios (analytics) and downloading of new content by seamlessly integrating with the ecosystem. It also allows for the scheduling of tests and lessons and also enables teachers to give homework.  

The device consists of three modules: 

 1. Reading

• Twin large braille cells to introduce the child to braille.
• Six standard-sized braille cells cover all primary learning needs including contractions.

 2. Typing 

• Universal design based on the standard brailler.
• Soft keys that are much easier to press than those of a mechanical typewriter.

3. Writing

• First-of-its-kind braille slate that is paper free.

Annie gives instantaneous feedback for mistakes and continuously evaluates the user, making the learning experience engaging and retentive. It introduces the world’s first digital braille games in single-player, multiplayer modes, challenges, lessons, and exercises to bring in a collaborative and smart learning experience.

Our target population is visually impaired learners below the age of 15; 19 Million learners worldwide. The truth remains, however, much of the social and political power in our world rests with sighted people. The onus for making education inclusive, and hence pave the way for social inclusion of those with visual impairments, remains with them. Thankfully, this path to inclusion too, can begin in the classroom.At broader organisational levels, schools, governments and parents need to collaborate with the express purpose of laying the foundations of an adequate and effective inclusion of visually impaired children.

Outcomes of our intervention:

- Increase in Braille literacy

-Increased Employability as research has proven a link between Braille literacy and employability.

-Increased employment opportunities will lead to higher incomes and reduce overall dependence on family members or the Government.

With Annie, the Social Impact created will revolve around helping millions of visually impaired children become literate, thereby kickstarting their education and paving the way to employment and independence. Our long-term vision is to deploy connected hardware products which can deliver interactive educational content to visually impaired students anywhere in the world.

We as a team at Thinkerbell Labs have over  7 years of experience in designing Assistive Technology- researching, developing and understanding the pain points of and delivering accordingly to our beneficiaries.
There is a shared knowledge base with the team as we have been working on the solution for over 5 years.

After extensive research and field study we have created a device which is now live in over 50 locations in various contexts. This allows us to better understand the shortcomings and blockers for the users.
Collaboration and deep partnerships with the US  (American Printing House for the Blind) , UK ( RNIB) agencies responsible for early childhood interventions also play a significant role in developing a relevant solution.
What we’re doing : Deploying Annies, co-development of software, content, deploying Helios - our analytics platform to monitor how students are using to understand user behaviour and stakeholder incentives.
We receive constant feedback and inputs from customers, partners, thought leaders and users that we incorporate into the solution

We are applying to SOLVE with Annie as it fits SOLVE’s mission to improve learning environments and outcomes for children with disabilities. By becoming a part of the SOLVER team, we hope to get mentorship and learn about how to scale globally. We also aim to improve our network and meet potential partners to achieve the goal of 100% Braille literacy. 

Annie is born out of research and field study of how Visually Impaired students learn.
Wooden blocks to read, outdated paper and slate for Braille writing, heavy and bulky Perkins Brailler to type, are the tools they currently use to learn Braille. Learning using these outdated and ineffective tools also requires a braille literate (resource) teacher and constant handholding where each student gets approximately 5 minutes of learning time per class. Literacy has a cascading effect on employability and Annie is a foundational device to make inclusive education for the visually impaired to be at par with their sighted peers.
Annie is Innovative because:
- No device currently exists that makes sure that the Visually Impaired student learns faster through multiple modalities - Audio and Tactile. Multiple aids and pedagogy is combined into one device to achieve a one stop learning device.
- There is instantaneous feedback and uploaded content in the device which helps in cutting down the 6 years of braille learning to 1.5 years. Since it is essentially a Self- Learning device, it removes the absolute need for a resource teacher where Blind students live. Teachers/ Parents can now monitor the progress of the student (remote enabled) without the need of hand holding and can focus on a larger group of students.
-Inclusive and versatile so anyone can help a visually impaired irrespective of expertise
-Interactive and smart content along with hardware modules listed above to increase retention and engagement, making braille learning fun.

In the next 5 years we will strive: 

• To become the de-facto way of Braille learning for visually impaired people all over the world
• To change the Braille literacy rate globally
• To build an inclusive learning ecosystem for children with special needs in order to level the playing field
• To build system & infrastructure for programs working towards 100% Literacy for children with visual impairments all over the world

In the next 1 year:

• Pilot out 100% literacy programs in India & US
• Increase efficacy of solution through usage data & third party studies
• To make Annie more affordable in order to expand the customer segments in developing markets

Our plan to achieve them:

• Work with agencies and local authorities to design and deploy programs for 100% literacy using Annie in various environments
• Critically examine usage data from Helios & Lex to improve content and thereby improve engagement and utilisation. Conduct studies to draw further correlations between Annie utilisation and increased literacy & employability
• Work on decreasing hardware cost structure and explore different financing options and product-service hybrid variants

There are 3 kinds of metrics that we as a social venture would track to measure our progress and impact :

- Business : Number of Annie Deployments and number of schools deployed in. 
- Target Population Number of visually impaired children in our age bracket that have been reached 
- Effect of solution : Average time taken to learn Grade 1 Braille on Annie, Number of lessons completed, hours  Student to teacher ratio 

These will give an overall picture of improvement in Braille literacy, enrolment in schools, and improved learning outcomes.

Activity:
1. Awareness and advocacy for the visually impaired and the need for inclusive education
2. Deploying Annie globally to ensure access to Annie Smart class or Annie device.
3. Building Blind Learning ecosystem for K12 +
4. Inclusive content and training given to stakeholders to teach the visually impaired students
5. Create a platform or Network of people working in the People with Disability space to amplify efforts and encourage collaboration

Output:
1. Efficacious product which increases literacy.
2. Due to effective learning there is an increase in Foundational Literacy and Numeracy.
3. Motivation to be educated and in turn leads to decrease in dependencies of the individuals.

Outcome:
1. Creation & Implementation of Policy promoting Inclusive Education - equipping & training all teachers to cater to the needs of the visually impaired students all over the world
2. Every visually impaired student in the world has access to 100% literacy programs empowered by Annie & trained educators

Long term Outcome:
1. Employability of all Visually Impaired peoples who then become tax paying citizens.
2. They will become productive citizens of society and thus corroborate to Inclusive Economic Growth. 

Annie runs on a Raspberry Pi and consists of three major modules - a refreshable braille display, a digital braille slate, and a Perkins-style braille keyboard - in one device. Annie also boasts of an audio output speaker and a standard audio jack to provide guided audio cues inside the interactive lessons. 

Data analytics: Continuous data capture of the children's usage pattern helps the teachers and parents track the learning progress of the child. This also digitizes the process of identifying support required by a student based on their proficiency which is a massive value add for governments that struggle with laborious, subjective disbursement of special needs education payments. 

Our solution is live in over 50 locations across different contexts. 

Our customer segments include special education schools resource centres, Government departments, Businesses, and Foundations. To name a few, Sensory Services - London & Wales GB; GEMS Modern Academy-Academic City, Dubai UAE; The POONA SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND TRUST- Pune, MH, India. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?...https://drive.google.com/file/...

We are striving to build an inclusive and safe workplace that enables and respects people irrespective of ability, gender, caste, and religion. Our woman-led, religiously diverse leadership team & our vision of making education inclusive for people with disabilities is a testament to our approach. We are conscious of our choice of not just our team members but also our investors, partners, and vendors aligning on the principles of Inclusion in each of our endeavours.

Our business model is to sell 3 Product variants Annie Smart Classes (ASC), Annie Resource Centre (ARC), and Ecosystem (Helios) Primary customer segments for ASC are Government, local authorities, Foundations,Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), etc Internationally we sell to  Inclusive schools, assistive tech distributors, Agencies responsible for dissemination of assistive tech. In developing countries, we have Annie Smart Classes in schools for the blind, Block Resource centres, District Disability Rehabilitation Centres among other avenues. A smart class consists of Annie devices, necessary infrastructure, relevant content (with localisation), and dashboards for sighted stakeholders. For the strength of 20 students with 10 devices , a smart class will typically cost 12280$ thus amortising the cost per student per year to less than $130 over a period of 3 years. To put this cost in perspective, the Government of India has a scheme called Assistance to Disabled Persons for Purchase / Fitting of Aids and Appliances (ADIP) which gives around $200.28 per year for every visually impaired person to procure a gadget of their choice.

In developed countries, we follow a model which has a one-time cost and an annual recurring cost for unlimited access to content and the entire analytics suite. For mature markets, there is the added advantage of customers already being accustomed to paying annual recurring subscriptions for maintenance/ongoing software updates, etc that the company can leverage directly for Annie. We have already started selling in the UK, North America, and the Middle East.

Our customers buy our solution because they can achieve learning outcomes for the visually impaired at 1/5th the cost.
The most significant advantage with Annie is that they can monitor and understand the impact their budget is making through Helios.

We would sign multi-year contracts with agencies responsible for the dissemination of assistive tech and other distributors who can make sure that our devices reach all visually impaired students globally.

We also would reach out to multiple government bodies who are responsible for inclusive education in their respective sectors who can help us set up Annie Smart Classes and Annie Resource Centres.

Our tactics of how we plan to achieve financial sustainability is multi-pronged across revenue generated, grants and investment raised in India and internationally. Recent salient examples are as follows:

• In August, 2021 we signed a 3 year contract worth $1.6M+ with American Printing House to distribute a minimum of 700 units every year in the USA.
• In Nov, 2021 our equity fundraise got extended due to commitments from investors on Shark Tank India (Anupam Mittal of People Group, Namita Thapar of Emcure Pharma, Peyush Bansal of Lenskart).
• In FY22 (as on March), we generated $330K+ in revenue in India
• In Oct, 2021, we were awarded $190K as a non dilutive grant by Abu Dhabi Investment Office & Early Childhood Authority to mobilise operations in the UAE