Deafblindness is a condition where a person's ability to speak, hear, and visualize is limited. Deafblind people are less known and often misunderstood. As a result, people struggle to obtain the proper support, often excluded from development and disability programs. Representing between 0.02% to 0.2% of the population, people with deafblindness are very diverse yet hidden groups, poor, unemployed, and belong to lower educational & socio-cultural backgrounds.
The project attempts to develop an intervention that can help deafblind people easily communicate regarding their physical ability and sensory perception. The nature of the deliverable is to bridge a communication gap between a deafblind person, educators, guardians, a person with hard hearing, and visually impaired people. Affordable braille-based interactive products are the project's final deliverables for communication interactions and educational learning purposes.
The project intends to help a deafblind and sensory-impaired person read and write in braille. As per the current market, existing braille products are expensive, making them inaccessible to most users. So, the cheapest deliverable form will help children and economically poor users easily access braille and increase the user's dependency on braille. The product will be suitable for all sets of environments followed by the user. For example, the product will be a mechanical-cum-digital communicator between one to multiple people. That includes the user, teachers, translators, guardians, and colleagues. Furthermore, digital intervention in the product will lead to access to information from digital platforms also.
Accessibility, Inclusive Design, Industrial Design, Play Experience, Social Innovation
