Esha was established as a volunteering project on 5th January 2005 by Nidhi Arora.
In that year, we worked to create Braille enabled visiting cards. Instead of using the limited mechanisation that was available then, we decided that each of our cards should be custom-made, and handcrafted with love.
These cards were made by VI Professionals. Chandrashekar was the first to clear the training program (it was a difficult program. A VI Professional had to learn how to identify the front and back, top and bottom, blank and printed space of a card – for more than 20 types of cards. Try doing that with your eyes closed!)
As the work grew, Chandrashekar also trained his brother, Venkatesh.
Today, Venkatesh handles the business.
They registered a legal entity some years ago and now service braille enabled visiting cards for the entire country – from Bangalore. Of course, a lot of our demand is from Bangalore too.
The first theater workshop of Esha was conducted on 1st August, 2007, with M. Tech students of IIT Delhi.
After attending the workshop, the students were so moved that they had no words.
Since then, a few thousand participants have participated in the Esha Theater Workshop – also called 9Tanki (name coined by Issac Mathew).
The best days of 9Tanki were when it was facilitated by Raju Koli. Raju is a VI professional who now works in a government job. For many years, he was the trainer who facilitated 9Tanki.
Participants would enter the room expecting a theater workshop for fun. All 9tanki workshops were laugh riots, but the ones conducted by Raju were also inspirational.
For his work, Raju was invited to speak at the Rex Conclive 2013-14:
CLABIL is a project of Esha – People for the Blind. It was started in August 2010 to :
– Make audio books freely available to the blind in particular and the print disabled in general.
– Inculcate an early reading habit among the blind children, and ensure that they do not lose the competitive edge gained by the additional childhood reading.
Esha believes that people are not exclusive by design. We do not want to make public spaces inaccessible.
The issues is that accessibility is not a part of our common consciousness. When we walk on a pavement, for example, it doesn’t occur to us that there is no ramp.
Inclusive Policy needs an inclusive public.
The best way to create an inclusive public is to create experiences of inclusion.
The Blind Walk is a fabulous five-minute immersive experience that has sensitised thousands of participants.
The Blind Walk is conducted all over the country (and world) by trained volunteers. It only takes five – fifteen minutes, and it is an eye-opener, in every sense of the term.
In 2016, we did an Outreach Project to take the CLABIL audio library directly to the peeople who stand to benefit from it – the knowledge have-nots.
During this year-long journey, we realised that there was a need to conduct independent research on knowledge disability in general and visual disability in particular.
Our research fills an important need.
All Esha Research Reports are freely shared. They are free to download, copy, and share with attribution.
Our research is oriented towards:
A. Providing answers – What does “Career” mean to a VI student?
B. Aiding Action – What is the knowledge acquisition behaviour of the knowledge have-nots? How should a solution for them be designed?
