The Universal Braille kit (UBK) is brainchild of octogenarian N.Krishnaswamy. It is designed to teach braille to blind children at home in developing countries with no access to special education. The Universal Braille Kit has a braille cube, an alphabet plate, a braille slate and stylus, a standard abacus and instruction manuals. This kit is produced by Workshop For Rehabilitation and Training of the Handicapped (Worth Trust) in India.
Last year I traveled to Chennai to meet N.Krishnaswamy (NK) at Vidya Vrikshah. We remained in close contact sharing ideas on various braille projects. Last week few accessibility designers met at Worth Trust factory in Katpadi, Tamil Nadu. NK was there, full of energy and ideas. NK never fails to surprise me. " Arky, At my age I am in a terrible hurry" he says with a chuckle. Just as he was leaving I managed to corner him and shot this video.
In this video N.Krishnaswamy explains the story behind the design of the Universal Braille Kit (UBK) and explains the concepts by demonstrating various devices of the kit.
The Universal Braille kit (UBK) from arky on Vimeo.
If you are interested to procure the Universal Braille Kit, please do get in touch with Worth Trust.
- Worth Trust
- 48, New Tiruvalam Road
- Katpadi, Tamil Nadu (India)
- Phone: 0416-2242739 0416-2243464
- Email: worth@md3.vsnl.net.in
- Website: http://www.worthtrust.org.in
Arky, that's a great effort. I have been looking for a short course or a good book to learn sign language after seeing many deaf children while i was in Hyderabad, being unable to communicate with them properly(i felt myself like a mute then). But I couldn't find a good one yet. I have tried some online tutorials but that didn't help me much. thanks for the 'worth trust' address.
ReplyDeleteJayaraj there are quite few website that teach sign language with videos.
ReplyDeleteIt was nice to listen to such a committed person, I looked at it on vimeo directly to see it a bit larger than the embedded one on your blog here. However the quality and light is very bad, so the function of the various tools could hardly be decivered apart from context given by speech:-(
ReplyDeleteDid you record this with a netbook webcam?
Loved the crow:-)) and the cars in the background. Crows/Ravens are my favorite birds.
It was quite a overcast day, I recorded it with my digital camera, but something went wrong with video encoding and compression at vimeo. Next time I'll try to get better version of the video up.
ReplyDelete@jayaraj- There are plenty of websites that offers short courses. You can check the internet to find the one that is right for you.
ReplyDelete