Vision Empower (VE) participated in the 'EMPOWER Assistive Technology Conference' conducted by the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) from 28th to 30th October 2021.
Vision Empower made a joint presentation on “Access to education amidst Covid restrictions: Enabling classroom interactions using a play-based learning approach” at Samvaad 2021
Vision Empower celebrated its fourth Foundation Day on the 4th of October 2021.
Are you passionate about Computational Thinking? Would you like to challenge yourself and make your CSPathshala Computational Thinking problems accessible for the children with visual impairment?
Vision Empower conducted a workshop on VICT – Computational Thinking for Children with Visual Impairment at the ACM India Computational Thinking at Schools Conference on 30th of September 2021 3:00 pm to 5:30 pm. Dr Swami Manohar and the Vision Empower team conducted the two and a half hour workshop...
Read more
Vision Empower in collaboration with Canara Bank Welfare Association (Matruchhaya) conducted an online workshop on the 1st of September 2021 for The Regional Braille Press, Rama Krishna Mission Ashram, Narendrapur (West Bengal), and National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Visual Disabilities (NIEPVD), Chennai. Trainers: Ms. Kalyani and Ms. Pushpaja from Matruchhaya
Vision Empower is pleased to announce the commencement of the first Pragya training for teachers of children with visual impairment in Gujarat. The three-day training is being conducted online on 25th, 26th, and 27th of August 2021.
Vidhya participated in a panel discussion organized by the celebrated Information and Knowledge Societies for Sustainable Development Goals on the Stocktaking of Women in Technology. Watch the session here The session was insightful and the participants enjoyed it with great enthusiasm. More than 160 people joined us via zoom and...
Read more
National Institute For The Empowerment Of Persons With Visual Disabilities (divyangjan) – Regional CentreDepartment of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities(Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Govt. of India)Poonamallee, Chennai – 600 056. & Vision Empower in partnership with Microsoft Jointly organize a 3-day online workshop on “Learning Numeracy through Play”...
Read more
Rishi Vadhana, VE Educational Co-Ordinator was awarded the second prize for presenting her paper titled "Teaching of logical reasoning diagnosis for print-disabled students" at the Science through Inquiry and Research (STIR) competition hosted by Bishop Heber College, Trichy for participants who have enlivened their Project/Research based Learning.
Vision Empower in collaboration with Saksham conducted the first Delhi Online Computational Thinking for Visually Impaired curriculum (VICT) Teacher Training intervention for teachers of two special schools for the blind in New Delhi on 25th June and 26th June, 2021.
Vision Empower conducted the first Pragya Teacher Training intervention for teachers of three special schools for the blind in Tamilnadu from 16th June to 18th June 2021. A total of 10 teachers attended this three-day online session. The three-day journey focussed on introducing the principles of teaching children with visual...
Read more
Vision Empower celebrated Global Accessibility Day with two events. Awareness on usage of Screen Reader by persons with visual impairment and A Group Discussion based on Vidhya's TED talk. Great way to recognize the importance of Accessibility in our lives.
By Devi Lockwood
Erick Ponce works in a government communications department in northern Ecuador. The 26-year-old happens to be deaf — a disability he has had since childhood. Read the full article here
Vision Empower conducted the second Pragya Teacher Training intervention for teachers of two special schools for the blind in Tripura on 5th May to 7th May, 2021. A total of 10 teachers attended this three-day session. Since this was their first interaction with us, the objective of the session was...
Read more
Vision Empower is conducting its 8th Pragya Teacher Training for teachers from 21 schools in Karnataka in English and Kannada from 21st to 23rd April 2021
On the 11th of April, Vision Empower organized a workshop for 25 student volunteers on creating accessible documents using MathType. Educational Coordinators from VE trained the students and worked with them from 10 am to 1 pm.
By Joel P Joseph
The Wire Science
Entrepreneur Christina Wallace wrote in 2015, “for most people – myself included – the default [picture of a scientist] is probably a white man in a lab coat, hunched over a microscope.”
Thanks to many individuals, collectives and movements showing the mirror on racial, gender-based and caste-based discrimination in STEM, this stereotype is slowly changing. However, few still have promoted the inclusion of people with a disability in STEM.
Vidhya Y wins the Special Women Achiever Award 2021 from Xiaomi India for her contributions to empowerment of the community through Vision Empower.
Vision Empower and XRCVC in collaboration with Samagra Shiksha Tripura announces the first I for Inclusion Training for 40 educators from the state
All for Play, Play for All is the motto of the the team passionate about Ludic Design for Accessibility. Visit the Ludic Design website to know more.
Vidhya Y is featured in TheLifeofScience.com calendar 2021.. This year’s calendar honors various ways in which women, transgender, and non-binary persons are contributing to science in India. It features around 40 contemporary individuals who are helping the growth of the Indian scientific and academic ecosystem.
Vidhya addressed a group of 100 students of 12th grade from the Ramakrishna Mission, Chennai and shared her journey and encouraged them to choose courses of their choice for higher studies.
To people with disabilities in India, STEM fields remain largely inaccessible. A glimmer of hope has come in the form of the National Education Policy 2020, but unless some serious gaps are addressed, progress is unlikely.
Vision Empower is happy to participate in the first Winter School of the Center for Accessibility in the Global South January 7th 2021 to January 9th 2021.
Supriya was part of a panel discussion at the online Wipro Partner Forum 2020 on the theme ‘Surviving to Flourish: Adaptations in the times of COVID-19.’
A three day online teacher training workshop Pragya’2020 was organized by Vision Empower on 9th, 10th and 11th of November. The workshop was conducted online on the Zoom platform and a mock session on how to join and operate the meeting on Zoom was conducted two days in advance to...
Read more
We celebrated the Foundation Day of Vision Empower on 4th of October, 2020. Three years since being incorporated, Vision Empower has been very fortunate to have incredible team members, mentors, partners, student interns and volunteers without whose support we could not have implemented our pilot projects. Read the details and view the videos here.
Roulette opens a new world for blind and low vision students in terms of education and career opportunities. Read more
Vision Empower has been accepted as a Primary member of the Daisy Forum of India (DFI). On Saturday, 19th of September, Supriya was invited to present at the AGM of the DFI on the activities of VE and especially Subodha and its utility. The presentation was well received. VE joins this consortium to work alongside the members on various interventions to make accessible content for persons with visual impairment, especially in India.
Visionary Ideathon is a 3-day event from 27th - 30th August by Project Sitara Foundation in collaboration with Vision Empower Trust. It is an opportunity for you to contribute towards science education for the visually impaired children of class 10 across India
Vision Empower is covered as one of the case studies in Chap 3: Bridging digital divides: A framework for digital cooperation.
The paper "Conceptual Learning through Accessible Play: Project Torino and Computational Thinking for Blind Children in India", co-authoured by Gesu India, Microsoft Research India, Geetha Ramakrishna, Vision Empower, Joyojeet Pal, Microsoft Research India and Swami Manohar, Microsoft Research India, was presented at ICTD 2020 (Paper Session 4.1)
Vision Empower was one of the 7 finalists out of 53 teams selected at the 5th edition of the Innopreneurs Startup Contest 2020 held on Feb 1 and 2 2020 at Indore.
Vision Empower presented Hexis – the refreshable Braille book reader and was awarded the Special Recognition Award.
Visually impaired entrepreneurs are helping make science subjects more accessible to students like themselves.
Naini Thaker, Forbes India Staff reports
A two day Teachers’ training workshop Pragya’2020 was organized by Vision Empower, in collaboration with Mathruchhaya- Canara Bank Relief & Welfare Society on 28th and 29th of January. The workshop was attended by 13 teachers from 8 schools for children with visual impairment. Out of 13 teachers who attended the...
Read more
Empower 2019, a conference hosted by IIT Delhi in partnership with Microsoft Research, was an event that aimed to bring together all stakeholders working in the assistive technology sector. Consisting of innovative talks, a tech exhibition, and 2 experience zones for persons with disabilities to experience technology curated with a...
Read more
In 2017, as her classmates at the IIITB’s MSc in Digital Society showed job offers from tech majors, 24-year-old Vidhya Y watched it in dismay. She, after all, was the class topper and gold medalist, and no company had made an offer fitting her skill… “Some of the companies asked...
Read more
The event is in third year running of its earlier Inclusive STEM Hackathon version. The hackathon was where blind and visually impaired developers, industry professionals and CS students came together to work on exciting and challenging problems. The aim of the hackathon was to sensitise the engineers from potential IT...
Read more
During the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2019, Vision Empower (VE) was given an opportunity to showcase Hexis in the IIITB pavilion.
The New Indian Express
Oct 9 2019
Prof Amit Praskash, Supriya Dey and Aishwarya O presented the findings of the Ludic Design Approach. Watch the recording of the talk.
Anubhav 2019 was designed based on information gathered over June 2018 – August 2019 from the VE school interventions which culminated in design of the 2 days of workshop on various learning activities.
Vidhya and Supriya were speakers in a panel Discussion on “Inclusive Learning for the Blind, Let’s Embrace the Growing Needs of Stem Education, Impacts on Inclusion and Social Integration” at the SayEverything Convention 2019, jointly organised by SayEverything Group and Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled
Vision Empower is sincerely grateful to Mr. Balaji Varadarajan for contributing to this endeavour of making STEM accessible, by donating geometry boxes to all the schools using funds he has earned for his contribution as a Programming language trainer for visually impaired persons.
In what could be a boost in Science education for the visually impaired, the Indian Institute of Information Technology-Bangalore (IIIT-B) has developed a technology to help generate tactile images of diagrams in Science textbooks faster.
VE and Enability Foundation incubated at IIT Madras signed an MoU on 6th of August 2019 to collaborate on creation of tactile diagrams using Tactograph, a product designed by Enability. The two teams will work on making more tactile diagrams available to VI teachers and students for Science and Math....
Read more
Vision Empower signed an MoU with Matruchhaya to Create Braille books for Mathematics and Science for visually impaired students at schools for the blind in Karnataka and for Skill Enhancement of school teachers from special schools for the blind to teach Science and Mathematics to visually impaired students through classroom...
Read more
Vision Empower organized the Pragya 2019 Teacher Trainings in collaboration with Canara Bank Relief and Welfare Association (Matruchhaya) from 26th June 2019 to 28th June 2019. Science and Mathematics teachers from 8 special schools for the visually impaired attended the training on directives from the Department for Welfare of Differently...
Read more
I for Inclusion was organized by Vision Empower for its staff, researchers and volunteers on 20th May to 22nd May 2019. The event was intended to create awareness among participants on the realities of visually impaired persons, bust myths about their limitations and provide teachers with the knowledge of the...
Read more
Vision Empower took part in the “Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2019” program arranged at IIIT Bangalore on 15th May 2019. Aditya Manpuria of Vision Empower presented the journey of creation of the Subodha accessible Learning Management System to representatives from various organizations working on advocacy and accessibility solutions.
Vision Empower addresses a gathering of teachers, government officials and NGOs at the Office of the Director for Welfare of Differently Abled and Senior Citizens.
The workshop , “Early Intervention and Access to Education ” held at The Association Of People With Disability (APD) was intended to create a more inclusive education system in India through culture, policies and, best practices. Supriya and Vidhya participated in the workshop along with stakeholders such as students, special...
Read more
Vidhya spoke about the challenges of VI persons studying STEM , lessons from her personal journey and in an event organized by the Blind Graduates Forum of India, conducted by XRCVC, Mumbai and supported by Sight Savers. She shared information about the various Vision Empower initiatives, and the rationale behind...
Read more
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced that, as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility efforts under its Living Progress program, the company has deployed end-to-end wireless infrastructure from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company at the I-MACX Studios located at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) Innovation Centre...
Read more
RISE (Research and Innovation, Society & Entrepreneurship) Feb 15 2019 intended to showcase IIITB’s focus & contribution across these dimensions. Vision Empower took part in the Roundtable on “Conversational Interfaces (Voice, Bots) for Good”
Dates: February 7 & 14 The third trimester teacher training program for teachers of Science and Math for Class 5 as part of VE-Pilot project was conducted at a school for children with visual impairments in Bangalore.
The second edition of Inclusive STEM Hackathon 2019 was organized at IIITB in collaboration with our partners IStem, XRCVC and IIITB.
Vision Empower conducted its first Teacher training program for Science and Math teachers for the VE-Pilot project.
Vision Empower and Vividha Trust organized Anubhav – a Science and Math summer camp for children of 5th grade for the visually impaired children in Bangalore.
I-STEM or Inclusive Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics is a self-advocacy group of individuals with visual impairment, who have chosen to pursue careers in STEM related subjects. On January 20 & 21st 2018, the I-Stem hackathon was held at IIIT BangaIore. It was co-organized by E-Health Research Centre at IIITB,...
Read more