In a country like India, where there is absolutely no infrastructure for physically disabled, this news brings the fresh air of change and hope. A start-up, Kriyate Design Solutions, based in India has successfully created World’s first Braille smart phone for blind people.

This phone converts all text in to Braille pattern and thus allow the blind people to read SMSes and emails. Sumit Dagar, the innovator of this smartphone claims, “This product is based on an innovative ‘touch screen’ which is capable of elevating and depressing the contents it receives to transform them into ‘touchable’ patterns“.

The working of the phone was explained by Times of India as:

The phone uses Shape Memory Alloy technology, based on the concept that metals remember their original shapes, i.e. expand and contract to its original shape after use. The phone’s ‘screen’ has a grid of pins, which move up and down as per requirement. The grid has a Braille display, where pins come up to represent a character or letter. This screen will be capable of elevating and depressing the contents to form patterns in Braille. All other elements are like any other smartphone.

Dagar, a TED fellow and recipient of prestigious Rolex award for Young Laureate, says he felt the need of such a device when he realised that so far, technology has completely ignore the marginalised ones and focuses mainly on the mainstream people. His idea got the boost at the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, located in IIM Ahmedabad. The prototype of the device is being developed at IIT Delhi and is currently being tested at L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad.

I am very thrilled to see that finally India is using its technical power in the right direction.