#BlindnessAwarenessMonth – Hexis aims to improve learning outcomes of visually impaired children in India

Hexis, a kindle for blind and low vision children, aims to remove the barriers they face in accessing content. The overall aim to enhance literacy skills and performance outcomes.

Hexis, a refreshable braille reader (RBR) could be a game changer for students with blindness and low vision in India.

These machines take digital information and convert them into a pattern of dots enabling a visually impaired person to read in real time.“Most children cannot afford these devices. Hexis will make the text of books accessible to visually impaired children”, says Paul D’Souza, Founder, Touche’tech VE, who along with N Rajagopal, Co-founder, Vembi Technologies has worked on developing Hexis.

Hexis grabbed the attention of Vision Empower (VE), the NGO that reaches out to visually impaired students across schools in Karnataka.

Affordable & easy to use

The feedback from children has been encouraging.

We plan to make it available across all schools, the first target being special schools for the blind and government schools. We are working on the quality and some features so both the content and programme is given along with it. – Supriya Dey, Co-founder, Vision Empower

The aim is that teachers will be able to populate the content on the devices directly. “This will need some amount of teacher training for content uploading and downloading”, adds Supriya.

Hexis stands out from similar devices for its affordability. Most available devices are out of the reach of many parents and schools/institution. The ease of use is an added attraction.

Access to content in all Indian languages

“Hexis is specifically designed for school children with ease of use in mind”, says Rajagopal. “Hexis is optimised for longer usage between battery charges. It also supports all Indian languages. This will help teachers and social educators form virtual classes, create class notes and quizzes.”

Any content in any Indian language can be converted to braille and pushed to Hexis with an app. Teachers can also keep track of how children are doing through analytics.

“Hexis aims to remove the barriers children face in accessing content”, adds Rajagopal. “ In the process, Hexis will reduce books drought in schools, improve comprehension skills and performance outcomes”.

Also Read:

• #BlindnessAwarenessMonth – These teens have made Hangman accessible for visually impaired people