Indian duo lends ears to help deaf students' education

​​​​​​​By Ahmad Adil

NEW DELHI (AA) - With COVID-19 adding more hardships to a large number of people who live with significant hearing loss, a startup in the western part of India is helping deaf students in the country by making education accessible to them in different ways.

According to World Health Organization estimates in India, there are approximately 63 million people who are suffering from significant auditory impairment. This figure includes children below 14 years.

Two Indian women, Janhavi Joshi and Nupura Kirloskar, who co-founded the startup Bleetech Innovations few years ago, are now making special books that are either dispatched physically or can be accessed on smartphones.

"The intensity of problems faced by children during the lockdown increases manifolds for children with disabilities. Children with deafness always struggle to fit into their families due to lack of communication," said Joshi, on the eve of World Hearing Day on Thursday.

"So in the lockdown, we made special books so that their education is not interrupted."

She said that they have named the book designed in the form of sign language as Bleebooks.

According to Joshi, Bleebooks have been given to over 3,000 students from 51 schools in India's western state of Maharashtra.

"These books are specially designed for deaf students with stories and activities for them," said Joshi, adding that these books are also connected to the BleeTV Library app through QR codes, which gives them access to content in Indian Sign Language.

BleeTV Library, which Joshi says targets school-going students who are deaf and who come from a lower economic background, has a diverse pool of content available, including 2,000 videos, for the deaf accessible through tablets or smartphones.

The duo had come up with the startup as they completed their degree in college in 2015. "Now, we are receiving support from different companies and even trusts to keep it going at a large scale," she said, adding that they have won a number of awards.

Joshi adds that they are now trying to take the technology to other states as well. "We are now planning to go to other states as well as in partnerships with the regional non-governmental organizations for operational support," she said.

With the number of cases related to hearing loss continuing to increase, experts say the focus should be on the early detection and treatment.

"All of us are working on early detection of hearing loss in children so that they can put on amplification and then intervention at the age of six months. But that doesn't happen in India and by the time when children are detected to have hearing loss, is more than two years, so we have been focusing on early screening, etc," Naresh K. Panda, a top head and neck surgeon in India, said.