Noida, Oct 27, 2018: KritiKal Solutions, a pioneer in Product Engineering, Innovation & R&D, put up an exhibit at the EMPOWER 2018 Conference, hosted by IIT at its Sonepat Campus from 25th-27th October. The conference showcased a variety of Assistive Technology Solutions, with a strong focus on empowering the Visually Impaired Community.
The main agenda of the conclave was to bring together all stakeholders in the space of Assistive Technology for people with disabilities, including Users, NGOs, Special Educators, Healthcare professionals, Entrepreneurs, Policy makers, and researchers engaged in different ways of creating, producing and disseminating Assistive Technology Solutions. EMPOWER 2018 saw a strong turnout of the End Users and Community, meeting a host of Service & Solution providers from across the globe with very Innovative Solutions.
The event comprised of Keynote Sessions, Panel Discussions, Technical Talks, Papers, Posters, Workshops, a Tech Podium and even an Experience Zone where one could get a hands-on experience of the devices on display.
iABLE – KritiKal Solution’s Assistive Technology Wing, took part in the exhibition to provide a sneak-peek of DotBook’s strength & capabilities to the User Community. We see the Innovative Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) Technology come to life with DotBook – a Refreshable Braille Display that enables Visually Impaired persons to access Digital Content through the tactile interface. With the mission to empower learning for VI Community at an Affordable Cost, DotBook stood out at the exhibition when it was being used and tested by the end users (Visually Impaired students, working professionals, Teachers). Both variants of DotBook – DotBook 20P (20 Cell Perkins Keys based) and DotBook 40Q (40 Cell QWERTY Keys based) were on display at the exhibition and are slated to hit the market very soon, under the iABLE Banner.
The highlights of the conference included:
- A thought-provoking keynote talk by Dr. T.V. Ramana, a legend among the Visually Impaired & a distinguished alumnus of IIT Madras who mentioned his work on friction-free user interfaces for eyes-free interaction and continued the interactive session on “Eyes Free Computing – Past, Present, And Future”.
- The keynote address by Prof. Katsuhita Yamaguchi Nihon University, Japan and Dr. Masakazu Suzuki Kyushu University, Japan who dwelled on the Infty Project – Aiming at Improvement of STEM Accessibility. The project research group has been developing assistive tools for print-disabled people.
- Another interesting talk by Dr. Chhabra, Chief of Spine Service & Medical Director at Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, who presented his views on community inclusiveness of consumers with spinal cord injury.
The three-day event not only saw the active participation of all key stakeholders from the world’s best universities and consortiums to discuss current solutions, but also worked to seed ideas to work on futuristic solutions to improve quality of life for the differently-abled community.
Speaking at the event, Mr. Siddharth Chandra, Sr. Manager-Sales & Marketing at KritiKal Solutions said that “It was a remarkable experience being part of the Empower Conference where we got the chance to interact with the real users and saw how our devices are helpful in making their life easier. We as a team under the guidance of Prof. M. Balakrishnan, Conference Chair at the Empower have been working hard to overcome the challenges of education amongst the visually challenged people. With this conference, we got the chance to showcase our device and we have received appreciations from the delegates who visited us and interacted with us at the booth. We have received an overwhelming response for our DotBook and we look forward to getting the device out to the World to let it weave its magic.”
On the occasion, Dr. TV Raman, said that “The DotBook has remarkable hardware features and is loaded with specialized apps to perform a variety of tasks. All the high-performance features and applications make a lot of sense for students/working professionals who require specific apps to accomplish specific tasks.” He went on to encourage our team, asking us to continue to – “bring assistive technology to the table that caters to a large blind community, which is completely underserved by the current technology stack.”
About KritiKal Solutions
KritiKal Solutions is a technology design house specializing in Product Development, R&D and Innovation. We have partnered with over 250 clients from all over the world and helped them translate ideas into products. We have done this using our deep domain know-how and technology expertise in Computer Vision & Image Processing (Analytics), Embedded Systems & IoT and, High-performance Mobile, Web & Software Applications. In the last 16 years, we have contributed to 50+ Innovations/Products in domains like Automotive, Health & Wellness, Energy, Consumer Electronics, Wearables, and Traffic/City Surveillance.
