Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Saturday, November 4, 2017
HEARING AND SPEECH IMPAIRED: This youngster’s achievements make a loud statement
Jalandhar, November 3
As they say, when one loses a sense, others are enhanced! This adage is well proven by 28-year-old Abhimanyu Mehta. He is focused, active, dedicated, dreamer and an achiever.Abhimanyu was born with a hearing impairment and hence could not speak also, but his work and achievements are loud enough to be heard by others.
Mehta, who is working in a private university in Jalandhar where he assists in the department of students affairs, is a cricket star too.
He got selected for the Deaf Cricket Asia Cup last year and was part of the Indian cricket team that won the Asia Cup. The match was held in Hyderabad.
Mehta, along with the team, was honoured by former President Pranab Mukherjee, making it the brightest moment of his life.
Son of a single mother, Abhimanyu’s demeanour clearly speaks of his confident nature. His working mother, Rekha Mehta, says that he is shy too.
The journey of raising her son was not easy, but Rekha is a strong woman. Sharing her experiences, she said when she got to know about the problem, she was taken aback. “But that didn’t stop me, I was strong enough to raise him and earlier I got him admitted to a normal school and found that he was getting special treatment there, which I never wanted, so I got him shifted to the school for the deaf,” said the mother.
She said she didn’t want her son to be given special treatment. “I wanted him to be rough and tough,” said Rekha. She said that he does lip reading and speaks a few words, but they both don’t interact with each other in sign language as the mother doesn’t know it.
Sharing his craze for cricket, Rekha said Abhimanyu would wake up at 3 in the morning and go on his cycle to learn cricket.
People would say I must take care of him and should not allow him to go, but I wanted to see him strong in which, I feel, I have become successful now,” said Rekha.
He goes shopping and is a gadget freak and a bhangra lover too.
Abhimanyu had gone through speech therapy too when he was a third grader and the therapy continued up to two years.
His mother has kept pictures of Abhimanyu with West Indies player Kieron Pollard and Sri Lankan star Lasith Malinga.
Against all odds
Twentyeight-year-old Abhimanyu Mehta was selected for the Deaf Cricket Asia Cup last year and was part of the Indian cricket team that won the Asia Cup. Mehta, along with the team, was honoured by former President Pranab Mukherjee, making it the brightest moment of his life.
Friday, November 3, 2017
These 5 Award-Winning Innovations Will Rekindle Your Belief in ‘Tech for Good’
Promoting and making such innovative projects accessible to the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) population, NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum (NSIF), a ‘Tech for Good’ platform, is bridging the gap and fostering inclusive growth.
This article is powered by NASSCOM Foundation.
It is common to observe that the crème de la crème of society enjoy the abundant fruits of technology. But thankfully there are still many innovators in India making technology accessible to the underprivileged – who otherwise, are the last to reap the benefits of any technological advances.
From granting thousands access to clean drinking water to saving hundreds of baby girls, from giving lower income groups access to financial services to empowering women and children, NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum (NSIF), instituted in 2008 by NASSCOM Foundation, has attracted over 2,000+ innovative projects from NGOs, corporates, social enterprises, government bodies, PSUs, students and individuals under its network.
Promoting and making such innovative projects accessible to the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) population, NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum (NSIF), a ‘Tech for Good’ platform, is bridging the gap and fostering inclusive growth.
Here are some of the exemplary NSIF-winning projects and innovations that you should not miss:
1. The award-winning novel device and system that screens newborn babies for hearing loss in poor resource settings.
Statistics reveal that of the 800,000 hearing impaired babies born each year globally, a striking 100,000 are Indian. In a nation with the problem of plenty and lack of resources, hearing impairment cases in newborns go undiagnosed due to expensive screening equipment and procedures.
Sohum Innovation Labs India Pvt Ltd aims to tackle this problem of no diagnosis with its development of a low-cost hardware-cum-software solution, which screens and diagnoses infants with hearing impairments at an early stage, using brainstem auditory evoked response.
The device has three parts to it. While the first is a base precision hardware to capture brain signals, the second is the algorithm software used to analyse the signals (which can run on various platforms) and the last part includes the reusable electrodes that fit any head size, used to capture brain signals.
The software gives clear indications of the right placement of electrodes. The final result is completely automated and clearly states a ‘pass’ or ‘refer’ at the end of the screening. The data is also fed into a backend centraliser server that rechecks and keeps track of infants that have been referred.
This device can not only function efficiently in noisy settings but also, doesn’t require the infant to be sedated during the screening process.
2. Bringing employment and employability opportunities in Tier 2 & Tier 3 city youth
While it’s a common phrase to hear most people say, ‘the job market is down, or there are no employment opportunities,’ there’s more than what meets the eye. Most of us forget to acknowledge the flip side of the issue, where several startups and small and medium enterprises struggle with hiring due to lack of visibility and HR resources; and a host of fresh graduates from universities in Tier 2- Tier 3 cities remain unemployed because bigger corporates hire alumnus of established institutes.
Rankskills Knowledge International Pvt Ltd has created the first online platform to bridge this gap by connecting job-seekers from Tier 2- Tier 3 educational institutes to Start-Ups /SMEs. Apart from showcasing available jobs in Startups and SMEs and allowing SMEs to view profiles of students, the portal also helps job seekers connect with mentors and skill providers to upskill themselves. The process of building a telephony service to help youth improve their communication skills and employability is still underway.
3. mGuru- Mobile Learning Apps for Literacy and Numeracy
The disparity that exists in the quality of primary education in the country is appalling. Studies reflect how the average learning outcomes for primary school students are dangerously low.
A 2014 ASER report reveals that over 48% of std. five students are reading at a Std. 2 level or less. In Math, 74% of Std. 5 Students cannot do simple division.
To tackle the drawback of this fundamentally flawed primary education system and innovate learning techniques, mGuru built mobile learning apps. These apps aim to enhance basic literacy and numeracy skills among students.
MGuru’s English app uses interactive learning activities to teach grammar, helps students speak, listen and understand English. From topics on grammar to vocabulary and alphabet, this app is available in various Indian languages including Gujarati, Hindi and Marathi.
The mGuru Math app provides students innumerable practice problems and assessments. It also has a comprehensive repository of material according to every topic. Its intelligently designed algorithm allows the app to generate any problem in K-5 for almost every Indian curriculum.
The impact of the organisation reflects in the 1200 students, teachers and parents it has empowered till date across Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Delhi, Kolkata and Bengaluru. It now plans to expand to Tier 2 & 3 cities.
4. Blee: Wearable for the hearing-impaired
There are over 60 million hearing-impaired people in India. Shocking, right? While those belonging to sound financial backgrounds improve their quality of life, most of these hearing-impaired persons don’t get that basic chance, as they belong to lower income groups.
It is unimaginable to think of how difficult daily life gets for these hearing-impaired individuals. From the sound of doorbells to a baby crying, to something as important as the fire alarms going off – think about the threat the loss of sound or absence of any notification, can potentially cause. And are the existing skyrocketing assistive devices or hearing aids the answer to the problem of the masses,? No, because they simply cannot afford it.
To tackle this critical gap in the market, BleeTech Innovations Pvt Ltd developed the Blee Wearable, a wearable and easy-to-use affordable device that notifies hearing impaired individuals of specific activities and sounds; they ought to be vigilant about.
It does this by notifying the user through pre-recorded sound alerts using lights and vibrations. Every sound alert has a unique set of vibrations. The device is connected to the user’s phone via Bluetooth where all the sounds are pre-recorded and stored. The capacity of the device increases as the collection of pre-recorded sounds grow. The device can also be used independently as a smartphone application.
Aiming to impact over 1 million hearing-impaired lives in the next five years, the device in its current prototype stage has been tested by hearing impaired people across Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Patiala.
5. Easing the farmer’s woes through technology.
For the longest time, the farmer has been a victim of oppression, sometimes at the hand of landlords, sometimes the middlemen and at most times, nature. While the natural elements that play a role in the mix cannot be tackled, there are several multi-dimensional challenges in the farmer-seller value chain that need immediate attention and change.
Conceptualized and developed by ConceptWaves, Livelihoods 360 is a comprehensive produce management technology solution designed to be universally accessible using a basic J2ME mobile (costing $20 or approximately Rs 1300).
It puts to use the best cloud and mobile computing capabilities to help farmers and revolutionize the crop estimation, collection and processing value chain, helping better returns for farmers and improved product quality.
With support from NAANDI foundation and SAMTFMACS, this solution has been impacting over 12,000 farmers across 658 villages in the Araku Valley region. It is helping crop collectors in coffee and pepper farms of Araku to capture the yield estimates, actual crop collection and is also helping farmer payments to be made on the field itself, using a mobile and pushed to a central server.
The impact reflects in how collection-payout cycles have reduced drastically from a month to 24 hours for 875 tonnes of produce. An 80% improvement in accurate forecasting is leading to better planning. The organic certification process that took over a week has been cut down to a few clicks.
These are just a few of the brilliant innovations that have been a part of the NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum. This year, NASSCOM Foundation, supported by American Express & Mphasis, is inviting applications in the areas of Education, Accessibility, Healthcare, Environment & Financial Inclusion. Select organisations will receive a grant of INR 10 lakhs, a specially designed mentoring program and access to NASSCOM Foundation’s ecosystem of tech for good experts. NSIF seeks to build capacities of social innovators to further accelerate social impact, and build awareness of the use of technology to drive revolutionary change across India.
This article is powered by NASSCOM Foundation.
It is common to observe that the crème de la crème of society enjoy the abundant fruits of technology. But thankfully there are still many innovators in India making technology accessible to the underprivileged – who otherwise, are the last to reap the benefits of any technological advances.
From granting thousands access to clean drinking water to saving hundreds of baby girls, from giving lower income groups access to financial services to empowering women and children, NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum (NSIF), instituted in 2008 by NASSCOM Foundation, has attracted over 2,000+ innovative projects from NGOs, corporates, social enterprises, government bodies, PSUs, students and individuals under its network.
Promoting and making such innovative projects accessible to the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) population, NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum (NSIF), a ‘Tech for Good’ platform, is bridging the gap and fostering inclusive growth.
Here are some of the exemplary NSIF-winning projects and innovations that you should not miss:
1. The award-winning novel device and system that screens newborn babies for hearing loss in poor resource settings.
Statistics reveal that of the 800,000 hearing impaired babies born each year globally, a striking 100,000 are Indian. In a nation with the problem of plenty and lack of resources, hearing impairment cases in newborns go undiagnosed due to expensive screening equipment and procedures.
Sohum Innovation Labs India Pvt Ltd aims to tackle this problem of no diagnosis with its development of a low-cost hardware-cum-software solution, which screens and diagnoses infants with hearing impairments at an early stage, using brainstem auditory evoked response.
The device has three parts to it. While the first is a base precision hardware to capture brain signals, the second is the algorithm software used to analyse the signals (which can run on various platforms) and the last part includes the reusable electrodes that fit any head size, used to capture brain signals.
The software gives clear indications of the right placement of electrodes. The final result is completely automated and clearly states a ‘pass’ or ‘refer’ at the end of the screening. The data is also fed into a backend centraliser server that rechecks and keeps track of infants that have been referred.
This device can not only function efficiently in noisy settings but also, doesn’t require the infant to be sedated during the screening process.
2. Bringing employment and employability opportunities in Tier 2 & Tier 3 city youth
While it’s a common phrase to hear most people say, ‘the job market is down, or there are no employment opportunities,’ there’s more than what meets the eye. Most of us forget to acknowledge the flip side of the issue, where several startups and small and medium enterprises struggle with hiring due to lack of visibility and HR resources; and a host of fresh graduates from universities in Tier 2- Tier 3 cities remain unemployed because bigger corporates hire alumnus of established institutes.
Rankskills Knowledge International Pvt Ltd has created the first online platform to bridge this gap by connecting job-seekers from Tier 2- Tier 3 educational institutes to Start-Ups /SMEs. Apart from showcasing available jobs in Startups and SMEs and allowing SMEs to view profiles of students, the portal also helps job seekers connect with mentors and skill providers to upskill themselves. The process of building a telephony service to help youth improve their communication skills and employability is still underway.
3. mGuru- Mobile Learning Apps for Literacy and Numeracy
The disparity that exists in the quality of primary education in the country is appalling. Studies reflect how the average learning outcomes for primary school students are dangerously low.
A 2014 ASER report reveals that over 48% of std. five students are reading at a Std. 2 level or less. In Math, 74% of Std. 5 Students cannot do simple division.
To tackle the drawback of this fundamentally flawed primary education system and innovate learning techniques, mGuru built mobile learning apps. These apps aim to enhance basic literacy and numeracy skills among students.
MGuru’s English app uses interactive learning activities to teach grammar, helps students speak, listen and understand English. From topics on grammar to vocabulary and alphabet, this app is available in various Indian languages including Gujarati, Hindi and Marathi.
The mGuru Math app provides students innumerable practice problems and assessments. It also has a comprehensive repository of material according to every topic. Its intelligently designed algorithm allows the app to generate any problem in K-5 for almost every Indian curriculum.
The impact of the organisation reflects in the 1200 students, teachers and parents it has empowered till date across Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Delhi, Kolkata and Bengaluru. It now plans to expand to Tier 2 & 3 cities.
4. Blee: Wearable for the hearing-impaired
There are over 60 million hearing-impaired people in India. Shocking, right? While those belonging to sound financial backgrounds improve their quality of life, most of these hearing-impaired persons don’t get that basic chance, as they belong to lower income groups.
It is unimaginable to think of how difficult daily life gets for these hearing-impaired individuals. From the sound of doorbells to a baby crying, to something as important as the fire alarms going off – think about the threat the loss of sound or absence of any notification, can potentially cause. And are the existing skyrocketing assistive devices or hearing aids the answer to the problem of the masses,? No, because they simply cannot afford it.
To tackle this critical gap in the market, BleeTech Innovations Pvt Ltd developed the Blee Wearable, a wearable and easy-to-use affordable device that notifies hearing impaired individuals of specific activities and sounds; they ought to be vigilant about.
It does this by notifying the user through pre-recorded sound alerts using lights and vibrations. Every sound alert has a unique set of vibrations. The device is connected to the user’s phone via Bluetooth where all the sounds are pre-recorded and stored. The capacity of the device increases as the collection of pre-recorded sounds grow. The device can also be used independently as a smartphone application.
Aiming to impact over 1 million hearing-impaired lives in the next five years, the device in its current prototype stage has been tested by hearing impaired people across Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Patiala.
5. Easing the farmer’s woes through technology.
For the longest time, the farmer has been a victim of oppression, sometimes at the hand of landlords, sometimes the middlemen and at most times, nature. While the natural elements that play a role in the mix cannot be tackled, there are several multi-dimensional challenges in the farmer-seller value chain that need immediate attention and change.
Conceptualized and developed by ConceptWaves, Livelihoods 360 is a comprehensive produce management technology solution designed to be universally accessible using a basic J2ME mobile (costing $20 or approximately Rs 1300).
It puts to use the best cloud and mobile computing capabilities to help farmers and revolutionize the crop estimation, collection and processing value chain, helping better returns for farmers and improved product quality.
With support from NAANDI foundation and SAMTFMACS, this solution has been impacting over 12,000 farmers across 658 villages in the Araku Valley region. It is helping crop collectors in coffee and pepper farms of Araku to capture the yield estimates, actual crop collection and is also helping farmer payments to be made on the field itself, using a mobile and pushed to a central server.
The impact reflects in how collection-payout cycles have reduced drastically from a month to 24 hours for 875 tonnes of produce. An 80% improvement in accurate forecasting is leading to better planning. The organic certification process that took over a week has been cut down to a few clicks.
These are just a few of the brilliant innovations that have been a part of the NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum. This year, NASSCOM Foundation, supported by American Express & Mphasis, is inviting applications in the areas of Education, Accessibility, Healthcare, Environment & Financial Inclusion. Select organisations will receive a grant of INR 10 lakhs, a specially designed mentoring program and access to NASSCOM Foundation’s ecosystem of tech for good experts. NSIF seeks to build capacities of social innovators to further accelerate social impact, and build awareness of the use of technology to drive revolutionary change across India.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Medical camp for hearing, speech impaired persons held
Voluntary Medicare Society Monday organised a special medical camp for hearing and speech impaired persons.
Deputy General Manager State Bank of India (J&K) Manoj Mehrotra inaugurated the camp.
He said the bank would earnestly consider various proposals made by VMS regarding implementation of the Community Based Rehab programme for hearing and speech impaired besides bearing the cost of medicines required for the camps.
He also promised to consider proposal for adoption of some special children of Shafaqat Special School of VMS.
Accompanied by Sandeep Vig, Regional Manager (SBI) Kashmir earlier took a round of Shafqat Rehab Centre, Shafaqat Inclusive/Special School, allied facilities and interacted with the patients and children.
A total of 47 beneficiaries attended the camp for Pure Tone Audiometery of them 29 poor patients were given FoC hearing aids.
On the occasion children of the school presented a skit and also mementoes to the Chief guest and the guest of honour.
The SBI officials lauded the role of VMS in mitigating the sufferings of the neglected section if the society. Earlier the founder President of VMS, Dr Mir Mohammad Maqbool formally welcomed the guests and gave them a brief introduction of the VMS.
SC Sends Man Back to Jail for Raping Deaf and Dumb Girl, asks HCs to Create Centres for Vulnerable Witnesses
The order came as the apex court adjudicated an appeal by the Maharashtra government against acquittal of a man of rape charge.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ordered for creating special centres for vulnerable witnesses in all the states to ascertain that they get suitable environment to testify.
The order came as the apex court adjudicated an appeal by the Maharashtra government against acquittal of a man of rape charge.
The accused was acquitted primarily because the victim was deaf and dumb, and also mentally infirm. She could not take the witness box to depose and hence, the accused got acquitted
Setting aside the acquittal order, a bench of Justices Adarsh K Goel and Uday U Lalit sentenced the accused to jail for seven years on the basis of sufficient circumstantial evidence, and also decided to bring about the necessary improvements in the trial processes concerning such vulnerable witnesses
The bench asked all the high courts to undertake the task and see to it that preferably, all the districts have such centres.
To begin with, the bench has directed the 24 high courts to set up at least two such centres within their jurisdiction in the next three months.
“Setting up of one centre for vulnerable witnesses may be perhaps required almost in every district in the country. All the High Courts may take appropriate steps in this direction in due course in phases,” stated the order.
Advocate Shirin Khajuria, who was appointed as the amicus curiae to assist the court, and Maharashtra government’s chief standing counsel Nishant Katneshwarkar cited a 2004 SC ruling that talked about certain safeguards during deposition of a child witness in a sexual assault case.
The lawyers also pointed out that the Delhi High Court has taken the lead by issuing necessary instructions on creation of centres for vulnerable witnesses.
The bench then said that all high courts should now ensure special centres for vulnerable witnesses so that they could depose in conducive environment and justice does not suffer because of the system's inability to give them appropriate opportunities.
Specially-abled magicians cast spell with their tricks
Nagpur: It was a humbling sight to see most among the audience speak to each other through sign language. From among them, most were practicing magicians who gathered on Saturday evening at Sai Sabhagruha to attend All India Deaf Magician Competition. Hosted by Bangalore-based Deaf Magicians Society of India, the event saw eleven deaf magicians from different states such as Delhi, Haryana, Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai compete in the art of deceiving people.
The event was inaugurated by DMSI's founder Bhupatlal Pandhi, President Suresh Agarwal, patron Navneet Bharuka, Dr Girish Gandhi and other guests. Gandhi welcomed the audience and participants, and expressed pride that Pandhi hailed from Nagpur. "Deaf and dumb children can be good magicians. I am happy that Pandhi has taken this humanitarian idea to the national level. If god takes something from us, he endows us with another gift in turn," he said.
There were three rounds in the contest — stage magic, micro magic and comedy. The first to begin the event was magician Preeth Pavitran from Kerela, who expertly brought things in reality and made them disappear at the next instant. All of the acts were accompanied with apt and engaging music. Narendra Prasad from Haryana made a dramatic entry on stage and gained most cheers for lighting up a bulb with his hand. Arun Kumar Dey from Kolkata had people in splits when he extracted water from a child's ear and nose. Iliyas Mohammad Yusuf Bhagavo from Amrut, Jay Kishan from Bihar, Ravi Chandra Cheravu from Hyderabad and Raju Kammatkar from Mumbai were the other participants who cast their spell with amazing tricks on the audience.
The audience cheered the participants by waving raised hands which was a kind gesture from their end. The second phase of rounds took place on Sunday evening. This was the fourth edition of the competition, previously held in Bangalore, Delhi and Hyderabad.
From among the three rounds, Pavitran, Chandra and Kammatkar won the first, second and third prizes respectively. They were also felicitated with cash prizes of Rs 15,000, Rs 10,000 and Rs 5,000. Other participants were given a memento and a token amount. The winners will attend the 17th World Deaf Magicians Conference to be held in Cyprus next year.
Govt deaf & mute school to be upgraded: Minister
Manipur Social Welfare and Cooperation Minister Nemcha Kipgen today assured that the problem of shortage of teaching staffs as highlighted by the school's authority of the Government Deaf & Mute School, Takyel are already in the pipeline.
This was stated by the Minister while gracing as the Chief Guest at the 33rd Foundation Day Celebration of the Government Deaf and Mute School, Takyel, held today. "As a Nodal Department, Social Welfare department is taking all efforts in coordination with other line departments to convert the various provisions of the Rights of persons with disabilities Act, 2016 into real practice" she asserted. She called upon all the concerned authority to come forward with their grievances to ensure best opportunities for the welfare and inclusive development. Addressing the gatherings mostly comprising of students, Minister Nemcha cited the example of famous personalities like Helen Keller and Sudha Chandran to encourage the students to come forward and show their hidden talents to all so that their talents would serve as their unique identity. Minister also lauded the teachers of this school for imparting many valuable lessons on top of their academic syllabus, with an indomitable spirit so that the student can boost their self-confidence to be a successful citizen. As a part of the celebration, students who successfully passed out in the HSLC 2016 and 2017 and also best teacher for the year 2017 were facilitated with gifts and cash award.
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