NEW DELHI: A few students of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, are trying to "add colour" to the lives of the blind. The IIT-D's chapter of the National Service Scheme includes the sub-group, Social Innovation Cell, that has been over the past two-three years developing technology for "social good." The colour sensor for the blind, a low-cost bed for blood-donation and a host of accessible computer and mobile games preceded the "Hackathon for Social Good" the SIC is just concluded at IIT.
About 200 - mostly first year IIT students - attended the workshop on developing mobile applications on Saturday. They submitted their ideas and a 'prototype' on Sunday. Fourth-year chemical engineering student and NSS general secretary, Amar Srivastava says the objective of the "hackathon" was to drive home the point that you don't need to have a PhD to solve problems. "Very small interventions can make a huge difference." He arrived at this conclusion after the colour-sensor and the blood-donation bed started to look like they'd make actual difference.
The inspiration for the sensor - its final shape will be of a marker-sized pen with built-in speaker - was Kartik Sawhney. Sawhney had battled with the CBSE to be allowed to study science in high school and had finally scored 95%. "The colour-sensor was developed keeping in mind science students who need to check colours of compounds. You can touch the compound - powder or non-corrosive liquid - with the sensor and it'll tell you the colour," explains Srivastava. It can currently detect 16 colours - it doesn't know light pink from dark pink yet -- but the team hopes to make its readings more accurate. "Those born blind have no conception of colour so they'll have to match the names to what it says in the books," explains Sawhney.
The collapsible contraption of hollow carbon-fibre rods, plywood and synthetic leather that's the blood-donation bed took all of last year. They got some informal support from doctors at AIIMS but the actual international standards still elude the team. "Currently the beds are imported and cost Rs. 70,000 to Rs.80,000 each. They're also heavy and can't be transported," says NSS executive and second-year computer science student, Karan Dwivedi. The IIT version, once its ready, will weigh about 2.5-3 kilograms and cost under Rs.5,000. The NSS chapters of the IITs had set up blood donation NGO Blood Connect. "We've held collection camps here and sometime blood spurts out. That's a huge deterrent to donors. Your posture has to be right, the back should be at a certain angle," explains Dwivedi. They don't have those specifications yet and have therefore created a bed on which these can be adjusted. "Once we get them, we'll fix it there," says Dwivedi. The SIC team hopes to team up with corporations or other funding agencies - it'll help them fine-tune, scale up and finally, market.
Dwivedi has also developed mobile and computer games for the blind, ensuring these are accessible versions of ones popular with the sighted. These are the immediate precursor to the "social good" apps. The touch screens look very different. "We divide the screen vertically into two. The two halves are the two buttons. For car-racing games, the player can hear the cars coming. If they hear it through their left earphones, they have to touch the right button and swerve right," explains Dwivedi. They've made accessible versions of racing games, Piano Tiles, 2048. A bunch of IIT-ians tried the last blindfolded but failed; the blind kids at the National Association for Blind, however, were able to remember which number occupied which square in a 4X4 tile once informed by the app. "We really underestimate them," says Srivastava, "A kid I met at NAB - a primary-schooler - climbed down two floors and crossed a road to get a document photocopied."
