Karthik Madhavan
The tracking pad finds its place in a footwear
A student at Caliber Trust for Differently Abled in Coimbatore using the
"Handsfree" mouse.- Photo:K.Ananthan. G. Venkatesh had always wanted to
start a Facebook account. He wanted to make his presence felt on the
social networking site, share what he liked with friends and also ‘like’
their posts. But having lost both his arms in an accident, his wish
never came true until he met S.Lakshmi Devi, an engineering student. She
had redesigned the existing computer mouse in such a way that people
like Mr. Venkatesh could use.
This was a blessing for him, because along with his arms he also lost
his confidence and his job. After dropping out of school after Class
VII, he was employed as a mechanic repairing two-wheelers. He remained
at home until a friend took him to a computer training centre run for
and by differently abled people, the Caliber Trust.
Even there he could not do much. The Trust’s Surya Nagappan said that
Mr. Venkatesh would sit idle in the class, for he could neither use the
keyboard nor mouse.
It was then that final year M.E. student from the PSG College of
Technology S. Lakshmi Devi got in touch with him through Surya Nagappan.
With help from the faculty and the management she modified the mouse by
embedding the tracking pad in specially designed footwear and another
mouse with push buttons were used as controls. And, then she connected
the two to the computer using USB cables.
She took the help of a cobbler near her home in Tirupur to get the
footwear ready. Ms. Devi said that the PSG management helped in her
attempt to patent the product. “They helped me conduct the patent
search.” But she found out that she could not as there was no innovation
in the basic mouse architecture. She is now trying to copyright the
design. The management had also helped Mr. Venkatesh by paying for the
transport he used to move from his home to the Caliber Trust’s computer
centre. This had helped the differently abled move beyond Facebook to
selected softwares.Ms. Devi said that her next move was to design a
keyboard that would be friendly for the differently abled.
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