“Public libraries are such important, lovely places!” Yes but do you GO there. Do you STUDY there. Do you meet friends and get coffee there. Do you borrow the FREE, ZERO SUBSCRIPTION, ZERO TRACKING books, audiobooks, ebooks, and films. Have you checked out their events and schemes. Do you sign up for the low cost courses in ASL or knitting or programming or writing your CV that they probably run. Do you know they probably have myriad of schemes to help low income families. Do you hire their low cost rooms if you need them. Have you joined their social groups. Do you use the FREE COMPUTERS. Do you even know what your library is trying to offer you. Listen, the library shouldn’t just exist for you as a nice idea. That’s why more libraries shut every year
If this post persuades even one person to get a free library account and use it, my time on this hellsite will not have been spent in vain
In an interaction with DNA Hindi, Priyanjali said that her mom motivated her to be an engineer and innovate for good. “Nowadays people are doing so many startups, doing innovation, you are also engineering student, you should also do something,” her mother told her when she had come to her home in Delhi.
Priyanjali, 20, said that she had noticed the Alexa device which takes commands when a user speaks. She realised that for those who cannot speak or cannot hear, Alexa is of no use. “That’s where the idea of making an AI model came to my mind and I started working on it,” she said.
One reason it is so exciting that this technology is coming out of India specifically is the high instance of deafness as a side effect of the tuberculosis treatments used there today.
One of the most common side effects of the previous (and often ineffective) old-generation tuberculosis drugs still used in treatment, is that one in four patients go deaf. Kanamycin is a fifty-year-old drug that would not get approved today. New generation drugs (such as bedaquiline) are either completely unavailable or priced far beyond affordability. The high occurrence of TB in India, coupled with poor diagnosis and management through private healthcare, and an ignorance among medical professionals of this common side effect, mean high instances of sudden deafness. (For more reading I suggest Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History by Vidya Krishnan)
In India, 6.3% of the population are Deaf or significantly hard of hearing. That’s roughly the same percentage as the number of children under 5 years old in the US. India has only within the last decade begun codifying and standardizing sign language (though it has been in use for centuries), but tools like this could significantly impact quality of life for those who use sign, and open opportunities for communication that are currently closed to many.
