Country's self teaching Braille device launched in Ranchi blind school

RANCHI: Now, learning braille will be self assisted for the 24 odd students at Rajyakrit Netrahin Madhya Vidyalaya in Harmu, Ranchi. The school students now have a chance at learning braille from Annie, the first braille self learning literacy device in the country developed by Bangalore based start-up, Thinkerbell Labs.
A total of 20 Annie-s, complete with a digital braille slate, a braille keyboard and a braille display were officially launched in Ranchi on Tuesday.These devices can assist visually impaired individuals in self learning braille through assistance in reading writing and typing in the language. Annie is designed to instruct the students in learning both Hindi and English braille through voice commands in Hindi language.
“Braille literacy is extremely low in the country because learning the language needs person to person contact. The teachers need to spend time with the students individually. Annie, which is a voice coordinated device, eliminates the need of a teacher’s physical presence and teaches the students through voice commands. We are using Hindi instructions in the devices distributed in Ranchi so that the students are familiar with the language of instruction. The biggest upside is the instantaneous feedback, as a student can understand that they are making a mistake as soon as they enter a letter,” said Avinash Kothuri, project manager at Thinkerbell Labs, which is a part of Startup India Project. A team of nine students from BITS Pilani Goa and other colleges of national repute, the prototype of Annie was inspired by the lack of braille teachers in India.
“The goal is to increase employability of visually impaired individuals. The students can spend time learning the braille alphabets ingrained on the keys following the voice commands. In case of classroom teaching, the learning process of braille is slowed down due to the lack of feedback,” he added.
Deputy Commissioner Ranchi, Rai Mahimapat Ray told TOI: “This is the first self learning braille device in the country developed by a bunch of young entrepreneurs. The device is aimed at improving the rate of braille literacy through an interactive interface. Since we have one blind school in the district, the pilot project has been launched there. But in case any other schools or organisations want to use the device, they can come in contact with us so that we could allot them timings to use it.”
“The employment rates of visually impaired individuals is co related with braille literacy. Many cannot have access to private tutoring and learning in groups of as small as eight students can be arduous. Though a lot technological developments have been made in increasing braille reading, Annie is the first device developed for teaching the language instead,” added Kothuri.
Dr Louis Marandi, minister of minority and social welfare and women and child development was present at the launch event. “This is a revolutionary device for boosting the braille literacy numbers. We will soon be expanding the project to all the blind schools and institutions in the state so that more and more people can benefit from it,” said Marandi.