I see things in a different way and i
can look at things in a way that a lot
of people don't see.
I feel with my heart more than what I see.
Ok, I will see you guys shortly.
I lost all of my vision due to a brain tumor
that laid on my optic nerve.
Then, I had to go through two brain surgeries. I wasn't used
to walking through the world in a dark.
Even though I was scared, it was an adventure to
learn about all my other senses when they kicked in,
to learn how much I can hear,
how much my smell sense of small
and my sense of touch really mean to me
So, India is a
young lady that I first met last summer.
She is just one of these young people who are
absolute force of nature.
Hello mr. van, that's gonna cause
scratches.
So I thought this would be a really interesting combination.
Here's a young lady, who's
visually impaired
who perhaps wants to be a computer
scientist, working with a group of
students at the University of Michigan
who are seniors in computer science and
looking for project to work on for this semester.
So we have a special guest, rockstar today.
Some of the ideas I have for inventions
are a bike that has gps system built
into the bike and then also having a
talking oven and to have the oven say
your food is done when it's all the way
cooked because be hard to use the kind of
tools that people with full vision can
use.
She's come up with you know ten ideas of
different software that she wants built
the students will come up with ideas
India is going to be visiting the class
on a weekly basis on wednesdays to give
her feedback on the tools it's just
going to be incredible semester and the
best possible scenario for teaching any
course is my students will be working to
make India happy on these app ideas and
and she will be the motivational
source for all of the students
throughout the semester and that is just
incredible opportunity for them.
this is actually how she's going to
interact with it and so okay he's going
to be reading into Alexis
so how does really work is that we
define all these utterances for specific functions
Hello, fine friends. Hey India, how are you doing?
Oh just living life. Each group that is
ready to start the demo, can I hear the noise?
Anybody that is not?
All right everybody's ready to go
Alexa?
Ask smart shelves where is the water
bottle.
Your water bottles on the right side of
the top shelf.
oh my god alexa asked smart shelf
Welcome to smart shelves. You can ask where the item is or you can place or remove an item.
What spots on the Shelf are open?
Right side of the bottom shelf, center of the bottom shelf, left side of the bottom shelf...
India has been amazing to work with. She comes in every week
and has s a bigger smile than
anybody else in the room.
Hey guys! Hey India, how are you?
Good, what are you working on?
I feel like there's a lot that can be brought to a table about software development because there's so
much in the world that has not been
developed for the blind.
I think the students really deep down believe that
they're helping India and I don't know
that they really realize how much India
is helping them. A lot of the students in
the classroom,
they've been given a lot throughout
their career, or they earned a lot
throughout their career.
They are going to one of the best
engineering universities in the country
and I think to whom much has been given
much is expected and i think they need
to realize that there's a whole
different audience out there for the the
work that they can do rather than just
strictly the commercial basis of let's
build something that makes the most
money. I think the idea of let's build
something that has the potential to help
people with different abilities is is
just a marvelous gift that I can
hopefully at least a little bit give to them.