From halli to Delhi and beyond

March 18, 2024

2–3 minutes

When life gave Vidhya lemons, she didn’t make lemonade. She built an entire lemonade stand. This is a story of creating opportunities and creating a vision that even blindness could not diminish.

Vidhya was born prematurely and overexposure to oxygen in the incubator led to her loss of eyesight. Her parents were shattered. For four years, the family visited hospitals trying to see if eyesight could be restored but realised eventually that it was not meant to be. They decided to lean in to their child’s name – education would be the path she would walk. As a student, Vidhya excelled, scoring 95% in her Grade 10 exams. “For the first time, my parents could show their daughter off,” she smiles. “I went from being the blind girl to being the smart blind girl.”

Over the years, Vidhya navigated large classrooms, inaccessible resources, and insensitive institutions multiple times. She leaned on a kind teacher and a helpful cousin as far as possible, but fought to stand up for herself as well. Ahead of her Grade 12 exams, she visited the Education Minister’s house and ensured blind children receive an extra hour to complete their exams. This is a legacy that lives on. Following school, Vidhya completed a BCA and then an MSc in Digital Society. When employers seemed hesitant to employ a person with disability, Vidhya took a decision that impacted thousands of children with visual impairment across the country. “I will not look for jobs anymore. I will create them,” she decided.

Of the 11 lakh students with visual impairment in India, less than half pursue STEM education in school. That was the problem Vidhya set out to solve. Joining hands with two co-founders, Vision Empower was born to ensure children with visual impairment have access to as many resources as sighted children, handhold teachers to delivery quality education, and strengthen numeracy skills, computation thinking and digital literacy in children with visual impairment. The team has also built Hexis-Antara, a Braille book reader that can be updated with content in mere minutes.

In her journey so far, Vidhya has received many awards and accolades, but the cherry on the growing cake is the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disability from the President of India in December 2022. Vidhya has come far, “from hallito Delhi,” as her family says. But now, Vidhya has her eyes set on the larger goal – from Delhi to Helsinki, Fiji, and everywhere else in the world. “No child with visual impairment should struggle to study what they want. In 6 years, we’ve grown all over the country. I think we can take this globally.”

Vidhya Y is the recipient of the 22nd Cavinkare Ability Award for Eminence 2024. Check out her story here.

Yashasvini Rajeshwar

Yashasvini Rajeshwar is a writer at heart and a development sector entrepreneur by profession. She enjoys working at the intersection of education, gender and disability, and understands the world around her through words – reading and writing them. She has been associated with Ability Foundation since 2006.