CHENNAI: After a three year research, 32-year-old Sathasivam Kannupayan, who was disabled by a polio attack as a child, found that lack of information was the biggest hurdle faced by differently abled people. That led him to launch a website (www.enabled.in) - a resource portal with news, government policies, jobs and assistive technologies. Kannupayan was honoured with this year's
NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Awards which recognizes organisations that design products that are accessible and usable for the differently-abled.
"When information is accessible, it helps those with disabilities in finding solutions, people who can help them, the benefits they can avail," says Kannupayan who is a senior software analyst. "A lot of visually challenged people and people with learning disabilities still can't access my website and that is what I'm working on now," he adds.
Along with Kannupayan, two other Chennaiites also won the award, making Chennai the city with the most number of awards this year. Prem Nawaz Khan Maraikayar, an engineer who has contributed to open source projects and Sujatha Srinivasan, from IIT Madras who researches on assistive device development are the other winners.
The former student and now faculty at IIT-M, Srinivasan says that as a mechanical engineer she wanted to use her education to do something that has tangible benefits. "Technology hadn't advanced when I began and not many people were working in this area, so that became my goal," says Srinivasan.
The awards in persons with disabilities category are given to those who have created an impact in accessibility and universal design - either in service provision, ICT, policy framework, grass-root level implementation, design and development, access audits, or even the rights movement/advocacy.
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