Developed By School Kids, This App Makes Reading Easy For Dyslexics

• Himanshu Roy


• 3 Aug 2016

 

Remember Taare Zameen Par? Yes, I am talking about the tale of the uber talented boy Ishaan who lived in the world of dancing words and how one of his teachers helped him to overcome dyslexia.

Now imagine Ishaan reading an e-book or even surfing the web and you would understand the difficulties that he will face in reading the words.

But now, countless people like Ishaan would benefit from an app called Oswald that addresses this problem of reading online for dyslexic people in perhaps the best way.

And you would be surprised to know that this app has been developed by two Delhi-based teenagers within a span of just two months.

18-year-old Anand Chowdhury and 15-year-old Nishant Gadihoke used to work on projects as part of their school’s computer club, and that’s when the idea of creating such an app occurred to them.

They decided to participate in a hackathon competition with this idea and over the next 36 hours they worked hard to create Oswald which ultimately helped them to win the competition.

The app is based on research done by Luz Rello and Rocardo Baeza-yates and delves deep into the issue of making reading easy for dyslexic people along with senior citizens and visually impaired.

In the research, it was discussed that how text background colours, text customizations, and font changes can improve the readability of online material for people with dyslexia.

This research was instrumental in helping Anand and Nishant develop the app. At present, the duo is busy developing guidelines so that the app can be incorporated into different websites, improving the readability of the sentences.

They are currently making rounds of different NGOs for the dyslexic and visually impaired to help them install Oswald in their systems.

Now, who could have thought that two teenagers could make such a big difference with an app developed in such a short time?

I guess now that Oswald is here, many other Ishaans would have it much easier when it comes to interpreting dancing words.