The esteemed AssisTech Foundation (ATF) Awards 2023 have been given to the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT-K), a leader in technical innovation, in recognition of their work with assistive technology. The award ceremony took place at Bangalore Palace, Bengaluru, Karnataka during the Bengaluru Tech Summit (BTS) on 2nd December, 2023.
Siddhartha Panda from the IIT Kanpur Department of Chemical Engineering and Braj Bhushan from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences accepted the ATF award together, presented by Karnataka Information Technology Minister Priyank Kharge.
The National Centre of Flexible Electronics (NCFlexE), IITK, and Siddhartha Panda's team were recognised for their work on the "Single Refreshable Braille Cell Based Braille Learning Device with a Touch Sensitive" and "Haptic smartwatch for blind and visually impaired" technologies.
"Assistive Application for Children with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia (AACDD)" was the invention for which Braj Bhushan and his team won the prize.
The institution won the ATF Awards' inaugural "Best AT Initiative by Educational Institutes" category in the enablers category, and it was highlighted in the assistive technology advances.
Talking about the award, Prof S Ganesh, Director IIT Kanpur, said, “The three awarded technologies address a major lag in assistive ecosystem and IIT Kanpur has been proactively working with an objective to develop more such technologies that can create an impact on society in the assistive domain and can be transformed into a product.”
India's first and most important flagship awareness campaign for the assistive technology ecosystem is called the ATF Awards. With the help of assistive technology (AT), these awards seek to honour the unsung heroes who are profoundly improving the lives of disabled individuals all over the world.
We are absolutely proud!