Meet Ms. Vanaja*

*Name changed for confidentiality

Ms. Vanaja is a teacher at the Mathru School for the Blind . Completely blind, she joined the Mathru School for the Blind in 2003 because she wanted to be economically independent and she wanted to put her skills to good use. Ms. Vanaja is one of the few teachers who have interacted with every TechBridgeWorld student researcher who visited the school since 2006. As a result, she has become known as the resident expert of the Braille Tutor devices at the school. In December 2015, Ms. Vanaja recently received an award from the Karnataka State Government for her teaching services and her involvement with TechBridgeWorld’s Braille Tutor project.

Ms. Vanaja demonstrates how she uses the Braille Writing Tutor to our Compassionate Engineers

Ms. Vanaja openly shares her feedback and suggestions for improving the tutors. In fact, during the Summer 2015 internship, she suggested a couple of games, which we were able to deliver. Two students who were working on the Braille Tutor project from Pittsburgh coordinated with the student interns at Mathru to add the Spelling Bee game and Numbers game to the Stand-Alone Braille Writing Tutor. She also has a vision for how technology can help blind and visually impaired. She hopes that technology can help her students to walk independently and to write with a pen like their sighted peers.

Ms. Vanaja (seated second from the left) with her State Award during World Disabled Day 2015