An app now allows vision and hearing-impaired students at Little Flower Convent Higher Secondary School to study on their own.
Students in higher classes use the mobile app to access lessons at home. The Vision Companion app, developed by BNY Mellon Technology, aids the visually challenged to download lessons and read them. The app comes with a split screen with the bottom half devoted to a microphone icon. The user can tap on the screen and speak a keyword from a lesson. The app will download the lesson from Google Drive and read it aloud.
“This is a self-help tool and volunteers helped record the lessons,” said M. Maharajan, Director of Applications Development, BNY Mellon Technology. The pandemic propelled the app, said Nitin Chandel, managing director and head of engineering at the company. “Accessibility is the key. Our affirmative interventions in aid of persons with disabilities include provisioning accessible educational aids and assistive technologies in support of education and barrier-free learning spaces,” he said. “We had volunteers who figured the needs. The team talked to parents and students,” he added.
