Autism Students Build Covid Website For Visually Impaired To Keep Them Updated
The trio has developed a portal that takes information from those sites and puts it in a simplified HTML format that screen readers are able to read with ease.
Three Chennai students with autism have developed the nation's first website for COVID-19 data for the visually challenged community of India.
NDTV
Also Read: Bullied For Being 'Weird,' This 8-Year-Old Girl Is Smarter Than Einstein And Hawking
Reported first by NDTV, the website www.hashhackcode.com/covid-19 simplifies information from government websites -- state governments, central as well as the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Why is it needed?
Usually, an individual with a visual impairment uses PCs or smartphones with the help of screen readers that reads aloud all the information on the screen. However, due to complex and more graphic-loaded websites, these readers don¡¯t work as efficiently.
To circumvent this, the trio has developed a portal that takes information from those sites and puts it in a simplified HTML format that screen readers are able to read with ease.
The three students behind the website are Prem, Pranav Sridhar and Saravana Raj. The website is the brainchild of a techie social entrepreneur, Manu Sekhar, the founder and CEO of HashHackCode who taught coding and web designing at his academy and later remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Manu, said in a statement, "These people are shunned for most opportunities. They are always pushed towards low skilled jobs. This proves them all wrong that they are capable individuals and they solve real-world problems".
21-year old Pranav Sridhar is currently studying visual communication and has now turned into an accessible web developer.
Also Read: YouTuber Mom Gave Up Adopted Son With Autism, After Making Money Off Him Online
Parents getting actively involved
25-year-old Prem Shankar is the one that updates data on COVID from his laptop, taking help from his mother, Roopa Sridhar, who had to quit her job and learn coding to assist Sridhar. Together they make an earning by making websites for weddings.
HashHackCode
Deepa Satish, the mother of Saravana Raj who also shifted her home from Tuticorin to Chennai to help her son get skilled, says that she was quite happy and that they had proved that these kids also can do websites and learn more of HTML and CSS coding.
Also Read: Elon Musk Wants To Eliminate Brain Diseases With His Neuralink Tech, But It's Going To Be Hard
The mothers are together raising awareness among IT companies and corporates to encourage opening for skilled individuals who have autism.
The website proving to be extremely useful
The site is a boon for many visually impaired across the nation including one Selvamani, a visually challenged IAS aspirant who keeps himself up to date on the latest trends in COVID cases at Nethrodaya -- an institution for the visually challenged.
The founder of Nethrodaya, C. Govindakrishnan says that the site has given them ¡°lots of impetus and edified our confidence to a different level¡±.
