Assistive Technology for Visually Impaired

During the months of Jan-April 2011, I had taken an interesting course on Multicultural Education and Human Diversity. The course was taken by Dr. Radha Parikh. It was a very interesting course which helped us to increase our thinking limit and perceive the world in a more humane way.

As a part of the cirriculum, I was assigned to do a project along with writing a paper on a topic of my choice. After thinking a lot, I finally settled down for assistive technology for the visually impaired. I once interacted with a visually impaired doctor who was a physiotherapist, and he told me about the various troubles he had in operating the devices. Hence, this topic inspired me to look at the currently availalbe technology and its user friendliness among the disabled people.

For the background study and the interviews, I visited various blind schools in Ahmedabad. I also interacted with many visually impaired people and took their feedback.

The whole project helped me to take a different prespective of life. As an engineer, we always make things keeping the masses in mind, but we forget about the disable people. It is always seen that a product is first made for the masses and then after some time, the same product is modified to suit disable people. Why we don't make products for the disable people and make normal people to adapt and use it ? The search for the answer is unending one and one day I hope to do significant contribution to this field.