An innovative application has been created by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur to help children who have been diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia. The Assistive Application for Children with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia (AACDD) idea was created by Dr. Alok Bajpai, a practising psychiatrist from Kanpur, Professor Braj Bhushan, and Professor Shatarupa Thakurta Roy from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Kanpur. The application includes a tool that makes learning simple for kids.
According to a release from IIT Kanpur, the programme offers students in Classes 1 through 5 a training module that is now available in Hindi. The programme uses a touchscreen interface with auditory input, haptic feedback, motor movement, and other features to make learning and writing Hindi characters easier. It is anticipated that additional languages will be added later.
According to the institute’s statement, dyslexia and dysgraphia are neurodevelopmental disorders marked by sluggish and imperfect word recognition. Developmental dyslexia affects the capacity to recognise words accurately and fluently and spell, whereas dysgraphia is the inability to write coherently.
There are numerous initiatives being made by researchers to address these difficulties because no two dyslexic students exhibit the same set of symptoms, it was said.
The rate of dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia in Indian primary school students has been estimated to range from 2% to 18%, according to statistics from Indian Pediatrics, the IIT Kanpur statement stated.
An average Indian class has roughly five pupils with learning difficulties, and there are an estimated 90 million Indians with learning disorders of different severity. Therefore, these children with exceptional needs benefit from extra assistance that enables them to study and function independently. IIT Kanpur’s assistive technology aims to provide children with additional support.
Director of IIT Kanpur Professor Abhay Karandikar stated: “Dyslexia and dysgraphia are two prevalent problems that may hinder a child’s growth in the absence of appropriate support mechanisms to assist them. Therefore, this brand-new creation from our team of specialists has the potential to be a blessing for kids with these illnesses. Additionally, people who speak Hindi will find it easier to study thanks to the addition of Hindi.
Application And Use Of IIT Kanpur
The programme helps kids with a task that requires them to trace Hindi letters by following a blue and a pink dot. A yellow line follows the youngster as they begin to trace from the blue dot to the pink dot.
The Assistive Application for Children with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia (AACDD) from IIT Kanpur is unique in terms of integration of audio, visual, and haptic inputs, and retraining the brain networks through manipulation of basic geometric patterns of words, such as lines, circles, etc. Other currently available technologies use the audio input to bypass the reading problem through text-to-speech.
