Page 52 - Status Report
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Affordable Digital Braille Accessibility
Principal Investigators
Surabhi Srivastava
Inceptor Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Innovision), Shraddha Sangelkar
SINE, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, The Pennsylvania State University
Mumbai Erie
The Context
More than 40 million blind individuals globally face numerous challenges in access to resources -
both printed and digital. For centuries, Braille based on the sensation of touch, has been the only
script available for the blind. Braille has been used to support over 100 languages and is critical for
skills such as spelling, grammar, analytics etc. According to the World Health Organization, with
a shift towards digital resources, printed material has become limited and outdated, literacy rate
decreased to 10% and employ mentrate decreased to 30 % for the blind. The assistive technologies
to support digital devices - computers, smart phones have been audio-based, making them
unsuitable for literacy and employment as they are limited by lack of script, language support
52 U.S. - India Science and Technology Endowment Fund
