Helping India's Sight-Impaired

Electrical and computer engineering junior Saurabh Sanghvi choose to study abroad this past summer through a Carnegie Mellon program called Technology Consulting in the Global Community (TCinGC). "I had always wanted to go abroad and witness a new culture and get more experience working with people from all different backgrounds," said Sanghvi. "One of the reasons I came to Carnegie Mellon was because of its diversity."

After initially having trouble finding study abroad programs spanning the entire summer, Sanghvi decided to look at options for working abroad. The TCinGC program, which paid for travel, housing, and a work stipend, was a great fit, and this past summer, he traveled to Bangalore, India. "I was able to go into the visually impaired community and work with students and teachers to identify current problems they are dealing with," explained Sanghvi. "Then based on their feedback I worked on creating and developing solutions that would help solve their problems and at the same time be sustainable enough to be used after I left."

Unlike some internships in which the reason for developing technology or its  ultimate users are unknown, Sanghvi knew who he was developing for and got to see his solutions implemented. "One of the greatest feelings was seeing our solutions being used by the school and seeing that the solutions were already having a noticeable impact on the school."

Sanghvi's program was a partnership between Carnegie Mellon, Microsoft Research India, and the Mathru School for the Blind. Three other Carnegie Mellon students, Kaleem Rahman, Ermine Teves, and Aysha Siddique, also participated. Sanghvi explains, "Our goal for the summer was to see which ways we could use technology to help the visually impaired community. We wanted to field test the Braille writing tutor, an ongoing project from Carnegie Mellon, to see whether this could improve the Braille literacy at Mathru, as well as improve the speed and accuracy of writing Braille."

In addition, the group worked on a Braille imaging project. "The school had never interacted with images before so we worked on creating software that would be able to take images and transform them into tactile images." Sanghvi and his counterparts typically conducted two or three field visits per week and spent the rest of their time in the Microsoft Research India lab.

Sanghvi is very positive about the opportunity. "Based on this experience I became a lot more passionate about global development work," said Sanghvi. "Several other students and I decided to start an organization that would focus on increasing awareness about global development at Carnegie Mellon and eventually create a worldwide network linking people together who share the passion of development." As a result, Development Solutions Organization was founded in May 2008 and is currently sponsored by multiple partners including Yahoo, WorldTeach, and the Peace Corps.