The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur has been honoured with the prestigious AssisTech Foundation (ATF) Awards 2023 for engaging in assistive technology activities. The award ceremony took place at Bangalore Palace, Bengaluru, Karnataka during the Bengaluru Tech Summit (BTS) 2023.

The ATF award was presented by Priyank Kharge, Minister for Information Technology, Government of Karnataka, and was received jointly by Prof Siddhartha Panda from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Prof Braj Bhushan from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. The institute was featured in the assistive technology innovations and became the first-time winner in the Best AT Initiative by Educational Institutes under the enablers category of ATF Awards.

Talking about the award, Prof S Ganesh, Director, IIT Kanpur, said, “The three awarded technologies address a major lag in the 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.”

Prof Siddhartha Panda and team from the National Centre of Flexible Electronics (NCFlexE), IIT Kanpur received the award for the technologies Haptic Smartwatch for Blind and Visually Impaired and Single Refreshable Braille Cell Based Braille Learning Device with a Touch Sensitive. 

Prof Braj Bhushan and his team received the award for the invention titled Assistive Application for Children with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia (AACDD). 

ATF Awards is India’s first and foremost dedicated flagship awareness initiative for the Assistive Technology ecosystem. These awards aim to recognise the unsung heroes who are significantly impacting the lives of people with disabilities worldwide through the power of Assistive Technology (AT).