Training in echo location for blind people in India

In India, it is particularly difficult for blind people to participate in everyday life because there is little or no barrier-free infrastructure. The estimated 400,000 people affected in the southern Indian state of Kerala have hardly any opportunities to live their lives independently due to extreme limitations in their mobility.
The Kerala-based training center for blind people, Jyothirgamaya, has been working for their education and empowerment since 2015 and has already been able to help several hundred visually impaired people lead more independent lives.

Now the center wants to learn a new method of echo location, so that it can serve as a multiplier itself. Echo location is a technique in which - similar to bats - clicking and other sounds are produced, the echo of which provides information about the surroundings. Thus, blind and visually impaired people are enabled to systematically use the capabilities of their non-visual senses and thus move more safely and freely.

We were able to win the well-known echo location trainer Thomas Tajo for this project and are initially planning to hold a one-week workshop in the training center under his guidance. The target group are students of the center as well as instructors in order to teach echo location themselves in the future. The workshop will take place in November, after which the participants will practice and deepen what they have learned. If the first workshop is successful and there is a need for more in-depth knowledge, a second advanced training is planned. The collected donations will be used exclusively for the planning and implementation of the first workshop (meals for the participants, as well as additional travel and accommodation costs for Thomas Tajo).

The goal of the project is to conduct and evaluate the workshop together with our project partner Jyothirgamaya. In the long run, the training of trainers for echolocation should be made possible in order to make life easier for visually impaired and blind people in India through this innovative technology.