I’m here to talk about disability
innovations has been the journey of my
life for the last four years or so but
has been one that has drawn upon my
experiences for the last 26 years prior
to that and is a good convergence to
what one has done in life for the years
before that so now what is disability
innovation so if you look at the format
of this talk so the format would have
first section on why visibility
innovations next is going to be on the
experiment that we did third is going to
be on what the way going forward is and
fourth is how do we engage so why why
should we have innovations for
disability now if you look at statistics
first and which is an important day of
for us to understand why we should have
innovations if you look world over the
bridge of statistics say that 15% of the
population is disabled which means 1
billion people worldwide are disabled
all of those 1 billion people that are
disabled are 15% it includes all
disabilities but disabilities that are
either physical Lokomotiv disabilities
or speech it hearing impairment or
visual impairment for from close to 7 to
80% of the population and 80% of the
population of the disabled population
live in third world countries if you
look at India close to 60% of the
population today lives in rural areas of
the 70% in 2001 census which means the
disabled population is migrating to
urban areas which is not good it’s going
to lead to a concentration 78 percent of
the people with disability have not had
any access to medical advice 80 to 90
percent of the disabled population live
in third world countries and 75 percent
of the children who join schools in
urban areas Rob board of schools before
completing high school and if you look
at the total status of those who have
not enrolled and who those are dropped
out 95 percent of the children with
disability do not complete school e so
one of the societal value is that we
think we should follow a society by and
large should be able to have uniform
growth and uniform development okay that
is what forms a good society a society
devoid of most of the problems that one
would see like terror or others right
now what is important we must have an
egalitarian society
what is a callate term mean not that you
distribute wealth to everybody like you
to income use them it means having equal
access to resources and that is what is
important and this is embedded in our
constitution in saying that everybody
must get equal access to access and
rights to what they are due for right it
is by law it has been published and it
has been made available by law it is
arraigned well most people who are in
the backward classes who are probably a
CSD who did not have access to these
early due to various reasons but the
disabled needs something more they need
access through technology they cannot
just having that law alone is not
sufficient and that is why innovations
are very important the disability sector
in order to make sure that the disabled
have access to whatever resources they
need to have second I see a roomful of
people probably none who is disabled how
many of you do you think will be
disabled their future if you are should
did not invest in your future ok
question is I am good why should I
bother
ok you get disabilities in multiple
forms due to aging you will have due to
temporary conditions or you have
acquired disabilities
how many of you in a family of five
think you will have to deal with
disability during a lifetime if you take
five percent as if probability that you
will have to deal with disability for
one person for a family of five it is 30
to 40 percent overall okay now lastly
Design Thinking adds value for everyone
I’ll go back my dear a common experience
I was heading datacom ventures rnd here
in a time when the common there are
comments characterized by switching
speeds the normal equipment that was
lying in consumer premises used to do
about 100 250,000 packets per second we
set our goal at 100,000 a million
packets per second why did I sell it at
a million period of million packets even
five years down the line was not
expected to go beyond five hundred six
hundred thousand packets per second the
logic was very simple if we can design a
system that can take care of a million
packets per second you can always
downgrade the system we easily and
produce any system ranging from hundred
thousand packets per second to a million
packets per second okay so what’s the
design for disability do going from the
previous experience it’s it’s a very
high benchmark for design it expands the
thought envelope and that is how it
leads to far better designs what does
this do for able users nothing better in
examples to show all of us knows this is
a typewriter the keyboard without which
all of us would not be able to use a
machine how many of you know that the
typhoid was invented for a blind person
to write letters the next is
text-to-speech we use it as a common
mode of interacting with mobiles now
right it was originally thought of for
people with disability who could not use
SMS all of us everybody uses SMS today
does originally put in the specification
of GSM for people who over who do not
have hearing capability to be able to
use the mobile networks to communicate
with their near and dear this is a
text-to-speech system which are used by
the blind to hear what’s on the screen
it was originally designed for the blind
what is it led to for use in common
systems today it has been shown that it
is far better for literacy and education
than all other modes of teaching let’s
look at one example that did not avail
of such a thought process this is a
scooter that has been modified for
disabled people who had to support Hilux
next to the drive wheel and you are
supposed to be driving that very clear
right if only the original scooter had
three wheels then those who did not know
how the balance or riding on a rainy
surface would have been pretty easy for
anybody who did not have disability so
what is it we did my own personal
experience I have traveled abroad I’ve
seen a lot of devices abroad I could not
use many of them in India because the
infrastructure was not conducive enough
for them so what did we do so a group of
us got together to look at this problem
and I had the fortune of sitting down
and building disability NGOs Federation
and in redrawing of the strategy
strategic plans for that particular
Federation we said we must have an
innovation slab and have it be in a
university as we called it and one was
looking at validation for that process
and a few of us thankfully got together
it was at a rate led by the Red Cross
and we looked at this whole space and
said we must innovate for disability he
looked at popular formats they were
hackathons and they were NATO Taj was
typically to day of fires which just
came into the concept or a barely
working prototype we had design
challenges where anybody could take up
their own design challenge and build a
device but was not focused or you had
focused
that building was a very very narrow and
had experts building prototypes our need
was to have the white canvas they have a
lot of people participating including
international participants they have
have large impact and especially in the
rural rural areas and have working and
functional prototypes so what did we do
we designed a new format a 60-day format
where people could take ideas all the
way up to working functional prototypes
so these are the organizations that are
involved in putting this whole thing
together this is the video of what we
[Music]
[Music]
premising or new rider was to ask built
an attachment to a wheelchair one can
convert the wheelchair to a three-point
chair and take the device outside the
house the mobility in here built a
combined chair for sitting and standing
for spastic children since will die OT
device that we put into prosthetics to
look at the usage of prosthetics
remotely global hands built a machine to
help those with handicapped use block
printing as a livelihood mechanism
software on each was a person from
portugal who build 3d printed ions with
silicone fingers and has nano printed
sensors on their fingers to enable this
we have Fuji foot that built elastic
energy storing foot for prosthetics we
have team team de chartres that weld a
device for people without hands to eat
by controlling with using a petal a
spoon with the pedal Bailey was not part
of the enable maketh on but during the
process of the marathon we came up with
others who wanted to come and take help
from us this is a smart Brailler mak is
again a kit for spastics and for those
with Quattro physics 3d PT was again for
spastics and cerebral palsy children to
help them write and use her fingers
bluetick is again was not part of they
enabled maketh on what came to us for
help but this is for people speech &
hearing impairment to be able to hear
when they were crossing traffic or when
somebody calls them out now we had MIT
from Boston come and study this whole
process along with us and they had said
that this was a very unique process in
terms of energizing innovation and
having an accelerated pace of innovation
in less than 60 days and they said this
has never been done earlier in the
social space anywhere in the world what
now
what do we do now during this whole
process that we had in the maker thumpa
kept thinking what do we do we have
prototypes they’re going to come up the
prototypes our end goal was to have
impact how do we have impact and since I
have been working both in the incubator
and the disability field the only
logical answer was to have a proper
incubator that will take all these
prototypes to live products and markets
and that’s how our D lab was born which
was to assist assistive and
rehabilitation device innovations in the
country this is the first lab of its
kind that will be set up in the country
and possibly worldwide and there is
organization called global humanitarian
lab that looks at humanitarian
innovations and we will be the first
disability incubator worldwide under
that Network the purpose of this
incubator team is to incubate
any social enterprise that works and
disability or an NGO that works in
disability we will look at the three
disabilities which is blindness or
partial blindness locomotor disability
and speech and hearing impairment we
will work on areas like smart city home
and office workspace modifications
personal devices education healthcare
and diagnostics now like I said 70% of
this to of the people who came to enable
maketh on we’re either students or
people with less than two years of
experience and we felt that is a huge
audience that we need to engage and so
we decided we will engage its students
quite well we believe that the next
generation is always better than the
earlier generation in terms of exposure
in terms of intent and in terms of
know-how so we said we should provide an
ecosystem for the students to engage
which is what we will do in knotty lab
we should have open space work for
students to come and work and learn
about disability from various people who
work in the open space we must have
semester and long term projects that we
can engage with students from various
colleges and we would have design
workshops using design labs from across
the world that is being held I once came
across a statement and I think that is
very important I am NOT I have done I am
what
overcome and I think it’s beholden on
all of us to help those who are
underprivileged to overcome the
challenges be what it may be part of the
change and the choices thank you [Applause]
innovations has been the journey of my
life for the last four years or so but
has been one that has drawn upon my
experiences for the last 26 years prior
to that and is a good convergence to
what one has done in life for the years
before that so now what is disability
innovation so if you look at the format
of this talk so the format would have
first section on why visibility
innovations next is going to be on the
experiment that we did third is going to
be on what the way going forward is and
fourth is how do we engage so why why
should we have innovations for
disability now if you look at statistics
first and which is an important day of
for us to understand why we should have
innovations if you look world over the
bridge of statistics say that 15% of the
population is disabled which means 1
billion people worldwide are disabled
all of those 1 billion people that are
disabled are 15% it includes all
disabilities but disabilities that are
either physical Lokomotiv disabilities
or speech it hearing impairment or
visual impairment for from close to 7 to
80% of the population and 80% of the
population of the disabled population
live in third world countries if you
look at India close to 60% of the
population today lives in rural areas of
the 70% in 2001 census which means the
disabled population is migrating to
urban areas which is not good it’s going
to lead to a concentration 78 percent of
the people with disability have not had
any access to medical advice 80 to 90
percent of the disabled population live
in third world countries and 75 percent
of the children who join schools in
urban areas Rob board of schools before
completing high school and if you look
at the total status of those who have
not enrolled and who those are dropped
out 95 percent of the children with
disability do not complete school e so
one of the societal value is that we
think we should follow a society by and
large should be able to have uniform
growth and uniform development okay that
is what forms a good society a society
devoid of most of the problems that one
would see like terror or others right
now what is important we must have an
egalitarian society
what is a callate term mean not that you
distribute wealth to everybody like you
to income use them it means having equal
access to resources and that is what is
important and this is embedded in our
constitution in saying that everybody
must get equal access to access and
rights to what they are due for right it
is by law it has been published and it
has been made available by law it is
arraigned well most people who are in
the backward classes who are probably a
CSD who did not have access to these
early due to various reasons but the
disabled needs something more they need
access through technology they cannot
just having that law alone is not
sufficient and that is why innovations
are very important the disability sector
in order to make sure that the disabled
have access to whatever resources they
need to have second I see a roomful of
people probably none who is disabled how
many of you do you think will be
disabled their future if you are should
did not invest in your future ok
question is I am good why should I
bother
ok you get disabilities in multiple
forms due to aging you will have due to
temporary conditions or you have
acquired disabilities
how many of you in a family of five
think you will have to deal with
disability during a lifetime if you take
five percent as if probability that you
will have to deal with disability for
one person for a family of five it is 30
to 40 percent overall okay now lastly
Design Thinking adds value for everyone
I’ll go back my dear a common experience
I was heading datacom ventures rnd here
in a time when the common there are
comments characterized by switching
speeds the normal equipment that was
lying in consumer premises used to do
about 100 250,000 packets per second we
set our goal at 100,000 a million
packets per second why did I sell it at
a million period of million packets even
five years down the line was not
expected to go beyond five hundred six
hundred thousand packets per second the
logic was very simple if we can design a
system that can take care of a million
packets per second you can always
downgrade the system we easily and
produce any system ranging from hundred
thousand packets per second to a million
packets per second okay so what’s the
design for disability do going from the
previous experience it’s it’s a very
high benchmark for design it expands the
thought envelope and that is how it
leads to far better designs what does
this do for able users nothing better in
examples to show all of us knows this is
a typewriter the keyboard without which
all of us would not be able to use a
machine how many of you know that the
typhoid was invented for a blind person
to write letters the next is
text-to-speech we use it as a common
mode of interacting with mobiles now
right it was originally thought of for
people with disability who could not use
SMS all of us everybody uses SMS today
does originally put in the specification
of GSM for people who over who do not
have hearing capability to be able to
use the mobile networks to communicate
with their near and dear this is a
text-to-speech system which are used by
the blind to hear what’s on the screen
it was originally designed for the blind
what is it led to for use in common
systems today it has been shown that it
is far better for literacy and education
than all other modes of teaching let’s
look at one example that did not avail
of such a thought process this is a
scooter that has been modified for
disabled people who had to support Hilux
next to the drive wheel and you are
supposed to be driving that very clear
right if only the original scooter had
three wheels then those who did not know
how the balance or riding on a rainy
surface would have been pretty easy for
anybody who did not have disability so
what is it we did my own personal
experience I have traveled abroad I’ve
seen a lot of devices abroad I could not
use many of them in India because the
infrastructure was not conducive enough
for them so what did we do so a group of
us got together to look at this problem
and I had the fortune of sitting down
and building disability NGOs Federation
and in redrawing of the strategy
strategic plans for that particular
Federation we said we must have an
innovation slab and have it be in a
university as we called it and one was
looking at validation for that process
and a few of us thankfully got together
it was at a rate led by the Red Cross
and we looked at this whole space and
said we must innovate for disability he
looked at popular formats they were
hackathons and they were NATO Taj was
typically to day of fires which just
came into the concept or a barely
working prototype we had design
challenges where anybody could take up
their own design challenge and build a
device but was not focused or you had
focused
that building was a very very narrow and
had experts building prototypes our need
was to have the white canvas they have a
lot of people participating including
international participants they have
have large impact and especially in the
rural rural areas and have working and
functional prototypes so what did we do
we designed a new format a 60-day format
where people could take ideas all the
way up to working functional prototypes
so these are the organizations that are
involved in putting this whole thing
together this is the video of what we
[Music]
[Music]
premising or new rider was to ask built
an attachment to a wheelchair one can
convert the wheelchair to a three-point
chair and take the device outside the
house the mobility in here built a
combined chair for sitting and standing
for spastic children since will die OT
device that we put into prosthetics to
look at the usage of prosthetics
remotely global hands built a machine to
help those with handicapped use block
printing as a livelihood mechanism
software on each was a person from
portugal who build 3d printed ions with
silicone fingers and has nano printed
sensors on their fingers to enable this
we have Fuji foot that built elastic
energy storing foot for prosthetics we
have team team de chartres that weld a
device for people without hands to eat
by controlling with using a petal a
spoon with the pedal Bailey was not part
of the enable maketh on but during the
process of the marathon we came up with
others who wanted to come and take help
from us this is a smart Brailler mak is
again a kit for spastics and for those
with Quattro physics 3d PT was again for
spastics and cerebral palsy children to
help them write and use her fingers
bluetick is again was not part of they
enabled maketh on what came to us for
help but this is for people speech &
hearing impairment to be able to hear
when they were crossing traffic or when
somebody calls them out now we had MIT
from Boston come and study this whole
process along with us and they had said
that this was a very unique process in
terms of energizing innovation and
having an accelerated pace of innovation
in less than 60 days and they said this
has never been done earlier in the
social space anywhere in the world what
now
what do we do now during this whole
process that we had in the maker thumpa
kept thinking what do we do we have
prototypes they’re going to come up the
prototypes our end goal was to have
impact how do we have impact and since I
have been working both in the incubator
and the disability field the only
logical answer was to have a proper
incubator that will take all these
prototypes to live products and markets
and that’s how our D lab was born which
was to assist assistive and
rehabilitation device innovations in the
country this is the first lab of its
kind that will be set up in the country
and possibly worldwide and there is
organization called global humanitarian
lab that looks at humanitarian
innovations and we will be the first
disability incubator worldwide under
that Network the purpose of this
incubator team is to incubate
any social enterprise that works and
disability or an NGO that works in
disability we will look at the three
disabilities which is blindness or
partial blindness locomotor disability
and speech and hearing impairment we
will work on areas like smart city home
and office workspace modifications
personal devices education healthcare
and diagnostics now like I said 70% of
this to of the people who came to enable
maketh on we’re either students or
people with less than two years of
experience and we felt that is a huge
audience that we need to engage and so
we decided we will engage its students
quite well we believe that the next
generation is always better than the
earlier generation in terms of exposure
in terms of intent and in terms of
know-how so we said we should provide an
ecosystem for the students to engage
which is what we will do in knotty lab
we should have open space work for
students to come and work and learn
about disability from various people who
work in the open space we must have
semester and long term projects that we
can engage with students from various
colleges and we would have design
workshops using design labs from across
the world that is being held I once came
across a statement and I think that is
very important I am NOT I have done I am
what
overcome and I think it’s beholden on
all of us to help those who are
underprivileged to overcome the
challenges be what it may be part of the
change and the choices thank you [Applause]
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