EMPOWER CONFERENCE 2021

SCHEDULE

The recordings of the Day 2 and Day 3 sessions with transcripts have been uploaded. Click on the Session Title to watch the recording. 

Link to Download Empower Program Schedule

Day 1

28th October 2021, Thursday

SESSION 1

10am to 1pm IST

Workshop – ML for Accessibility

  • Jyotsna Kaki, Scott Adams & Xuan Yang – Google
  • Nabanita Paul & Pradipta Biswas – Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore

  • Vaishnav Kameshwaran, University of Michigan, USA

  • Rajiv Ratn Shah –Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Delhi
View WorkShop Details

Session Co-ordinators :  Anirban Santara, Sohan Rudra & Gaurav Aggarwal from Google Research India

SESSION 2

2pm to 5pm  IST

Workshop – Creating Accessible STEM Content

Workshop Instructors

  • RAVI (Reading Assistant for Visually Impaired) Team – IIT Delhi
  • Volker Sorge – University of Birmingham, UK
View WorkShop Details

Session Chair : M Balakrishnan, IIT Delhi

SESSION 3

5:30 pm to 6:45pm  IST

Student Design Challenge 

NEW UPDATE

SESSION4

7pm to 8pm  IST

Conversation with Nidhi Goyal

Nidhi Goyal, India’s first blind stand-up comedienne, disability activist and founder of Rising Flame (www.risingflame.org) . Speaking to Barsha Nandy of Pickle Jar, Nidhi will tell us about making cinema experience accessible to the differently-abled, and among other things – her experiences while using dating apps. 

Also please note Online film festival, RimJhim, with films on the theme of inclusion is currently on. You may access the films at your convenience  untill 31st October on this link FILM FESTIVAL

 

Moderator: Pickle Jar  Team

Day 2

29th October 2021, Friday

SESSION 1

10am – 11:30 am  IST

Opening Session & Keynote by Dr.Vibha Krishnamurthy

  • Invocation by Vidhya Y and a Song of Hope by Children from across India
  • Welcome and Overview of EMPOWER, Amit Prakash – IIIT Bangalore, M. Balakrishnan – IIT Delhi
  • Address by Prof. Debabrata Das, Director – IIIT Bangalore
  • Keynote by Dr. Vibha Krishnamurthy, Developmental Pediatrician & Executive
    Director – Ummeed Child Development Centre (Don’t forget the F words! Making meaningful AT for children)
View Keynote Details

SESSION 2

12noon to 1:30 pm  IST

Product Demo

Featuring Products

  • Instalimb
  • Invicta & PREP, Continual Engine
  • Vinner & VBOSS,Vidyasagar
  • Rymo
  • Signable
  • Cybernoid
View Product Demo

Session Chair : Mohan Sundaram, ARTILAB Foundation

SESSION 3

2pm to 3:30pm  IST

AT for Locomotor Disabilities

  • Prasanna Lenka – National Institute of Locomotor Disabilities, New Delhi -Microprocessor controlled
    low cost prosthetic ankle for Transtibial Ampute
  • Robert Riener, Professor of Sensory-Motor Systems – Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich (Exoskeletons in Rehabilitation)
View Invited Speaker Details
  • Paper: Design and development of an adaptive chair for children with motor disabilities, Amritha R S, Alok Krishnan T – KSID, Kollam & Akila Surendran – NISH, Trivandrum 
View Paper Details

Session Chair : Anil Prabhakar, IIT Madras

SESSION 4

4pm to 5pm  IST

Keynote by Prof.Catherine Holloway 

 Co-founder, Academic Director of Global Disability
Innovation Hub and Professor at UCL’s Interaction Centre, UK

(Disability interactions: A new framework to design technologies for people with disabilities)

View Keynote Details

Session Chair : M.Balakrishnan, IIT Delhi

SESSION 5

5:00pm to 6:30pm  IST

Wearable & IoT Technologies in AT

  • Arun Jayaraman, Executive Director, Technology & Innovation Hub (tiHUB) & Associate Professor – Northwestern University, USA (Wearable Sensors, Smart Phones, and Machine Learning: Impact on Rehabilitation Medicine)
  • Madhav Lavakare, Founder – TinkerTech Labs (Transcribe Glass: an Affordable, Wearable Closed Captioning Assistive Technology)
  • Charudatta Jadhav, Vijay Raut & Kunal Shrivastava – TCS (Assistive Smart Glass–Enhancing ability leveraging AI)
  • Reshmi Ravindranathan, Robin Tommy & Athira Krishnan R – TCS (Experimental VALidation of findings using BCI in Autistic kids)
View Details

Session Chair : Anil Prabhakar, IIT Madras

SESSION 6

7pm to 8:30pm  IST

AT for the Global South

  • Vidhya Y, Co-founder and Trustee – Vision Empower 
  • Silvia Fajardo-Flores, Associate Professor – Department of Telematics, Universidad de Colima, Mexico (Use of Assistive Technology in Mexico)
View Invited Speaker Details
 
  • Paper: Designing a Tactile Display for Braille and Non-Braille Users: Anupama Thomas – IIT Madras & Elizabeth Rufus – VIT Vellore
  • Paper: Sanjay Mukherjee & Charudatta Jadhav – TCS (Empowering persons with special needs during examinations)
View Paper Details

Session Chair : Manohar Swaminathan, Microsoft Research

Day 3

30th October 2021, Saturday

10am to 8:30pm IST

SESSION 1

9:30 am to 10:30am

Commercial AT Product Platforms 

  • Ajit Narayanan, Staff Software Engineer – Google (Accessibility and Assistive Technology at Google)
  • Saqib Shaikh, Tech Lead, AI and Research, – Microsoft (The Seeing AI Project at Microsoft)
View Details

Session Chair : Mohan Sundaram, ARTILAB Foundation & Amit Prakash, IIIT Bangalore

SESSION 2

11am to 12 noon  IST

Co-creation of AT with Users

  •  Sayomdeb Mukherjee, El Labs, (Making a Spiderweb in the Disability Sector)
  • David Daković, Belgrade Director,TOM (Tikkun Olam Makers) (Innovation Are we missing something?)
View Details

Session Chair : Akila S, National Institute of Speech & Hearing (NISH), Trivandrum

SESSION 3

12:30pm to 1:30pm  IST

AT for Communication

  • Paper: Empowering Speech and Hearing Impaired: A Fingerspelling System for Indic Scripts, Amal Jude Ashwin, Srinivasa Chakravarthy – IIT Madras & Sunil Kumar Kopparapu – TCS Research
  • Paper: Voice to Indian Sign Language Translator, Prasannna J. Shete, Pranjali S. Jadhav, Dikshita Jain & Pearl A. Kotak – University of Mumbai 
  • Paper: Improving Efficacy of the Indian Sign Language Translation Model)Ankit Rajiv Jindal, Mahesh Raja, Sparsh Nagpal, Rahul Murthy – Friends for Inclusion 
  • Paper: Speech Therapy System for Children with Cleft Lip and/or Palate, Aneeta Sabu, Deepthi G.A., Sowmiya V., V.S. Devika, Lani Rachel Mathew & Amritha B.J. – Mar Baselios College of Engineering and Technology 
View Presenting Paper Details

Session Chair : Akila S, National Institute of Speech & Hearing (NISH), Trivandrum

SESSION 4

2pm to 3:30pm  IST

Inclusive Design

  • Keynote by Rama Gherawoo, Director – The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art, UK (A story of inclusive design, its future, and its relationship to accessibility and desirability)
  • PVM Rao, Professor of Design – IIT Delhi (Enriching value and experience of assistive technologies through inclusive design)
  • Gaurav Raheja, Professor of Architecture – IIT Roorkee (Empowering accessibility by contextualizing Universal Design)
  • Kavitha Krishnamoorthy, Founder and Managing Trustee – Kilikili (Listening to Unheard Voices– informing design of inclusive play spaces with what children have to say)
  • Kalpana Kharade & Hema Bhadawkar – K J Somaiya College of Education (“We Want the Moon”: An Exploration of the Possibility of making Astronomy Accessible for the Visually Impaired Learners)

Session Chair : Namita Jacob, Chetana Trust

SESSION 5

4pm to 6pm  IST

Product Expo

Participants will get an opportunity to learn more about the products on display and interact with their designers and company representatives; separate virtual rooms will be created for different products to enable useful conversation

Session Chair : Mohan Sundaram, ARTILAB Foundation

NEW UPDATE

SESSION 6

6pm to 7pm  IST

Short Film & Conversation with Director Prof.Itandehui Jansen

  • Screening of Signs & Gestures (15 min): this riveting short film, directed by Itandehui Jansen, is about a blind date where a visually impaired florist, Clara, meets Simon, who uses sign language. The film has audio descriptions.
  •  Right after the screening of this short film, director Prof. Itandehui Jansen will join us from Edinburgh in a conversation with Aishwarya, a research scholar at IIITB.

Moderator:  Aishwarya, IIITB

SESSION 7

7pm to 8:30pm  IST

Keynote by Dr.Raja Kushalnagar & Closing Session

  • Keynote by Raja Kushalnagar, Professor and Director, IT Program – Gallaudet University,Washington, USA (Efficient multimodal interfaces for more inclusive and effective software for users with different abilities and backgrounds)
  • Announcement of Student Design Competition Winners
  • Vote of Thanks and Announcements related to EMPOWER 2022
View Keynote Details

Session Chair : Manohar Swaminathan,  Microsoft Research & Amit Prakash, IIIT Bangalore

Day 1

28th October 2021, Thursday

10am to 5pm IST

SESSION 1

10am to 1pm

Workshop – ML for Accessibility

View Workshop Details

SESSION 2

Workshop – Accessible STEM Content

View Workshop Details

2pm to 5pm

SESSION 3

Student Design Challenge 

Timings

Day 2

29th October 2021, Friday

10am to 8:30pm IST

SESSION 1

Timings

Opening Session & Keynote by Vibha Krishnamurthy

View Keynote Details

SESSION 2

Timings

AT for Locomotor Disabilities

SESSION 3

Timings

Wearable & IoT Technologies in AT

SESSION 4

Timings

Keynote by Catherine Holloway 

View Keynote Details

SESSION 5

Timings

Product Demo

SESSION 6

Timings

AT for the Global South

Day 3

30th October 2021, Friday

10am to 8:30pm IST

SESSION 1

Timings

Commercial AT Product Platforms

SESSION 2

Timings

AT for Communication

SESSION 3

Timings

Inclusive Design

SESSION 4

Timings

Product Expo

SESSION 5

Timings

Keynote  & Closing Session

Please note more details about the sessions, timings and speakers will be updated shortly.

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