Voice for the voiceless

CHENNAI: Innovation sprouts only when a strongly-felt need arises. Ajit Narayanan sensed such a need two years prior, when he visited Vidya Sagar, an organisation that works with children and young adults with neurological disabilities and speech disorders. As  a result of his device, Avaz, hundreds of such children are now able communicate with ease.“Avaz is a handy hardware device for people with speech disorders such as cerebral palsy, autism and aphasia that translates their muscle movements into speech,” says this 29-year-old city based innovator. Lacking controlled movements makes communication hard for people with neurological disabilities and Avaz works on the principle of scanning their movements. It displaysvarious options on a screen and presents a highlight that moves between the different options. When a full sentence has been constructed, Avaz converts the message into speech.  more read...