sakshamtrust

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Digital Data Protection & Consent Protocols for Persons with Disabilities: A Legal Primer

Digital Data Protection & Consent Protocols for Persons with Disabilities: A Legal Primer

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Saksham organised a two-day Tek Fiesta - 14th and 15th August 2022​

Saksham organised a two-day Tek Fiesta – 14th and 15th August 2022​

Saksham Tek Fiesta Saksham organised a two-day Tek Fiesta on the 14th and 15th of August to inaugurate our newest resource center in Shimla. We set up an experience zone containing many of our assistive technology solutions, intended as a one-stop spot for persons with visual impairments and/or their allies to try their hand at all the available assistive tech in order to make an informed choice…

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Launch of Preparatory School for Children with Blindness in Jalandhar

Launch of Preparatory School for Children with Blindness in Jalandhar

We have wonderful news for you! It gives us great pleasure to share that we recently inaugurated the Saksham Resource Center in Jalandhar, Punjab. We would like to make a special mention of Dr. Vinod Pal, who is associated with Niti Aayog. He has been one of our strongest pillars of support in the process of getting the Saksham Jalandhar Resource Center up and running. Ms. Seema Chopra graciously…

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Equipping the students with laptops at Young Scholars Educational Trust -July 15, 2022

Equipping the students with laptops at Young Scholars Educational Trust -July 15, 2022

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Webinar on Word Document Accessibility, 13th of July, 2022

Webinar on Word Document Accessibility, 13th of July, 2022

Saksham organised a training webinar on Word Document Accessibility on the 13th of July, 2022. Intended as an effort to bring organisations working for Persons with Disabilities (PWDs)up to date with contemporary document accessibility practices, the session was well-attended by Saksham staff and additionally by representatives from other organisations like Arushi in Bhopal. As is widely known,…

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The Voice of Saksham 2022

The Voice of Saksham 2022

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The Voice of Saksham

The Voice of Saksham

Saksham is organising the “Voice of Saksham” singing competition for young visually impaired people to encourage and highlight their musical talents. The competition also aims to make inroads in their digital empowerment, by means of awarding the winners assistive technology devices. The devices that will be given away as prises to the winners have been generously sponsored by Canara Bank The…

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Status and opportunities for promoting use of assistive technologies and content for persons with disabilities in India: Survey

Status and opportunities for promoting use of assistive technologies and content for persons with disabilities in India: Survey

On Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Saksham launched its survey, ‘Status and opportunities for promoting use of Assistive technologies and content for persons with disabilities in India’, as part of its research project with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry. The research project aims to understand how and what tools, technologies and content persons with disabilities in…

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India’s Saksham Trust Recognized as WSIS Champion 2021!

India’s Saksham Trust Recognized as WSIS Champion 2021!

Saksham Trust (and its subsidiary Saktek Foundation) became one of the final champions of the prestigious World Summit on the Information Society Prizes  (WSIS) 2021 in the cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content category. Held virtually this year, the event took place on 19 May 2021 and was presided by Mr Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General, International…

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Accessible Medical Equipment for Persons with Visual Impairment- COVID-19

Accessible Medical Equipment for Persons with Visual Impairment- COVID-19

As COVID-19 began to expand in India, resulting in the worst health sector condition, more COVID patients are home isolated under intensive care. The challenges increase 10 times more for persons with visual impairment. During this time their dependency on others doesn’t make things better. So, our team of experts have tried to compile some of the best accessible medical equipment available in…

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A Better COVID-19 World for Persons with Disabilities in India.

A Better COVID-19 World for Persons with Disabilities in India.

A White Paper titled ‘Priorities for a COVID-19 World: ICT Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities in India’ was released by the Broadband India Forum (BIF) -‘ A Think-Tank for Digital Transformation’, during a special session of The Digital Dialogue on Monday, 10th August 2020.

The paper recognizes that although there are Acts, policies, and guidelines like the Guidelines for Government…

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Kibo XS: Your Companion which makes Print and Handwritten Text Accessible in multiple languages

Kibo XS: Your Companion which makes Print and Handwritten Text Accessible in multiple languages

Saksham in collaboration with HCL Foundationhad started its project Experience zone- Affordable Assistive Technology for Persons with Print Disabilities in 2019. The objectives of this project are to sensitise the parents, educators and stakeholders about the available solutions, and to enable them to try out and identify most appropriate solutions for their specific requirements. The series of…

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Tactile Coloring Set for Visually Challenged Kids Saksham in collaboration with HCL Foundation had started its project Experience zone- Affordable Assistive Technology for Persons with Print Disabilities in 2019.

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An electronic labelling system for people who are visually impaired and blind

An electronic labelling system for people who are visually impaired and blind

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report, there are 285 million visually-impaired people worldwide and among these, there are 39 million who are totally blind. There have been several systems designed to support visually impaired people (VIP) and to improve the quality of their lives. However, unfortunately, most of these systems are limited in their capabilities.

There are several…

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During this difficult time of the worldwide Covid pandemic, schools have been using the digital platform to stay in touch with students and continue their studies. Saksham has not lagged behind in this endeavour.

Teachers at Saksham are connected with their students through WhatsApp audio and video calls or through Zoom. They have made planning for the new session and taking classes accordingly. The activities are being supervised by the seniors and they are also giving their suggestions for further improvement in delivering the concepts. Every day teachers are sharing interesting lessons/ activities on whatsapp. Parents are following those videos and teaching their children. Parents also share videos of the children after completing the task. Teachers are giving homework which the children are submitting through voice messages, videos or images. Teachers and parents are interacting regularly, resolving queries and sharing suggestions. Parents are also communicating among themselves and motivating each other through the videos they are sharing the activities they are doing with their children.

Our integrated children are also attending the online classes conducted by their respective schools. All the students have been promoted to the next class. They have downloaded the NCERT books from E pathshala and the books of other publishers from Sugamaya Pudtakalaya. Their teachers are uploading E lessons and assignments on the website of the school which students are completing and sending back to them for checking. They have started their tuition classes through WhatsApp or conference call with our integrated teachers. They are helping students in completing their assignments and notes. Apart from this some of the students have joined other online classes to appear for competitive exams like through Akash Institute, career launcher, online course in learning Python and chess from Indic AI foundation.

Online class

coloring in the coloring book

An Online occupational therapy

Thumb Painting

Online class- Fine motor skills activities

Online occupational therapy class

Occupational Therapy

learning math

learning about plants

Online class

Online class

Online origami class

All this may sound very familiar to normal households in Delhi or NOIDA. However, this becomes special when we realise that all of the above applies to students with blindness or multiple disabilities. These students are between the age group of 1 to 18. At least 70% out of these are from families dependent on daily earnings and economically weaker section of the society. What makes this special is that this transition from normal school learning to digital form of learning has been made possible due to the long term investment of Saksham in digital literacy of all their students right from their childhood. To be able to read and write in  Devanagari and Roman script in addition to the braille script is an integral part of the education program. Every child has their own digital device such as a laptop or smartphone with screen reading software or the refreshable braille display. These devices enable students to be able to read and write in large print or listen to books and assignments or to read or write in braille independently without any external intervention. These very devices enabled them to use the applications and tools for online classes and methods of communications by themselves. This was introduced for their inclusion in mainstream schools and to prepare them for contemporary employment opportunities. This vision of investment into future has paid dividends by allowing to continue their education during the lockdown. Very few children with blindness or low vision have this  privilege in India. It is said that the world will never be the same after Covid-19. We do hope that the state of digital literacy and the age at which this is introduced to children with disabilities such as blindness, low vision, learning disabilities, etc. will change for all. It is often lack of willingness to change and not the lack of resources that stands in the way of introducing digital reading and writing solutions and making them part of their day to day method of studies. If Saksham can do this in India using community support, we certainly believe that it is possible to achieve this for every child with a disability in our country.

Nothing stops in Saksham during Covid Pandemic During this difficult time of the worldwide Covid pandemic, schools have been using the digital platform to stay in touch with students and continue their studies.

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How to protect yourself from COVID-19 As we all are aware COVID-19 is spreading rapidly worldwide and we are fighting against this pandemic through maintaining social distancing and by frequently practicing good hygiene.

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The Largest Collection Of Online Materials For The Visually Impaired SAKSHAM has been converting regular books into audiobooks for decades. It's been a long winding road from that moment to the present time, but presently, the Sugamaya Pustakalaya digital library that is supported by the Indian government more than 500,000 titles available for the blind and print disabled persons.