Eyeway Conversations

In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Chetan Sharma, a banker turned social entrepreneur from Rajasthan.

Chetan lost his eye sight to cancer at the age of four. He went on to complete class ten from a special school, securing 90th position in the entire state of Rajasthan competing with lacs of sighted students. He equipped himself with higher education in the mainstream, participating in extracurricular activities like debates, current affairs competitions, to emerge victorious among his sighted counterparts.

Chetan was appointed as stenographer in a nationalized bank after completing his education. Through hard work and determination, he went on to become a Senior Chief Manager.

Chetan took a voluntary retirement from his well-paying job at the age of fifty, to start UDBHAV VISION FOUNDATION, a non-profit set-up to work for the betterment of blind and visually impaired community.

Chetan loves reading in his free time, especially inspiring autobiographies.

Tune in to hear about his mantra for a successful life!

To access the podcast transcript, click on link: https://otter.ai/u/Lz_Pum847uO1cC3oY6oqRdgMddk

This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.

To support our work, kindly visit the link: https://scorefoundation.org.in/get-involved/

In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Kishor Gohil, a social activist, social entrepreneur, stand-up comedian, and music promoter.

Kishor was born blind and grew up surrounded by people like him who didn’t have sight and was always aware of the challenges faced by the blind community.

Kishor believes that with right opportunities come good education, employment, and overall well-being of blind and visually impaired people. He runs a skill development programme in Vangani (a small town in Maharashtra that is home to a large number of visually impaired people) where blind and visually impaired people learn candle making, paper products, and handicrafts which are marketed at a large scale to generate income.

Kishor has been promoting the music band for the last twenty five years and has performed in countries like the US, UK, South Africa, Jordan, Israel, Gulf countries, etc. He also uses the music platform to promote and market the manufactured products to garner support for the people involved in the work.

Kishor loves mimicking well-known Bollywood personalities and works passionately towards creating an empowered community of blind and visually impaired people.

Tune in to hear about his journey!

To access the podcast transcript, click on link: https://otter.ai/u/kYaqx4K1OnsX3KBuWaums7vIAYo

This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.

To support our work, kindly visit the link: https://scorefoundation.org.in/get-involved/

In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Nikita Vaid Raut, an HR and L&D professional, a passionate singer, and a motivational speaker.

Blind by birth, Nikita never let the pity of people dampen her spirits and was committed to making a place for herself in the world. She completed her MBA degree and was recruited as a Manager-Human Resource by a leading public sector bank.  With hard work and determination, she became the first blind employee to rise to the senior leadership level of an Assistant General Manager in the bank.

She is presently posted as the Learning Head of the Training College of the Bank in Mumbai and designs and conducts programmes in the domain of Leadership, Soft skills, and HR.

With all her achievements Nikita has been bestowed with many accolades and awards. The most prestigious and recent one being the “National Award in the category of best Employee [Visual impairment] conferred upon her by the Ministry of Social justice and Empowerment” Awarded by the Honorable President of India.

Nikita is an accomplished Singer and has sung for All India Radio for over 10 years. She has been invited as a motivational speaker by different corporates and institutes and so far has conducted more than 100 such sessions/interviews inspiring people.

Tune in to learn more about her mantra of life!

To access the podcast transcript, click on link: https://otter.ai/u/cPY4eP4-brJwl6e4cC4OmvKo8To

This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.

To support our work, kindly visit the link: https://scorefoundation.org.in/get-involved/--

In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Sachin Porwal, a visually impaired Law student from The National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), Hyderabad.

Sachin lost his vision in class six due to Retinitis Pigmentosa and was forced to drop out from the mainstream English medium school and take admission in a government-run Hindi medium school for Blind children. The transition from being a sighted child to becoming totally blind came with a lot of challenges, but his mother’s support encouraged him to study further and give his best.

Sachin who aspires to be a lawyer advocated for his rights when he was denied admission to class 12 by a mainstream school. He later cleared the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) to get into one of the most prestigious Law universities and wants to use his experience to advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities.

Besides studying Law, Sachin is a stand-up comedian, technology enthusiast,  and loves watching travel-related videos.

Tune in to learn more about Sachin’s resilient journey!

To access the podcast transcript, click on link: https://otter.ai/u/BUsklpAqYfFomWDLk7lSpYjCfiI

This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.

To support our work, kindly visit the link: https://scorefoundation.org.in/get-involved/

In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Justin Philips, a Braille and spoken English trainer at Vision-Aid, an organization working to empower blind and visually impaired people in the country.

Born with congenital blindness, Justin lost his sight by the age of seven. Despite the lack of technology and resources for blind people during his growing up years, Justin achieved a master’s degree in Economics.

He navigated his career path as a telephone operator, salesperson, a trainer and even worked as a transcriptionist for eight years, before learning to use computers. Today he not only trains people on Orbit Reader, Windows, iPhone etcetera but also works actively to ensure blind people have access to jobs.

Justin also teaches Bollywood and Western popular music and loves reading books, and listening to podcasts and music.

Tune in to learn more about his journey from ordinary to extraordinary!

To access the podcast transcript, click on link: https://otter.ai/u/N97jZArU_UKoNGdL7_PGQrCkAhA

This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.

To support our work, kindly visit the link: https://scorefoundation.org.in/get-involved/

In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Shakila Maharaj, a social entrepreneur, innovator, recognised global disability trainer and strategist from Durban, South Africa.

After losing her vision in early twenties due to a childhood injury, Shakila’s life was uprooted. Her family shifted to Ireland to ensure she had access to quality education and life.

Over the years, Shakila’s remarkable and diverse accomplishments have contributed towards creating an inclusive society. She pioneered audio description for 12 years across South Africa and established AudioDescribe (Pty) Ltd in 2010 and in 2020 the sister company, ShazaCin Accessible Media .(A first in the country and continent) with the aim to bring young blood and shift audio description into the digital space. Shakila’s aspiration for blind persons to see the visual world resulted   in the creation of the ShazaCin mobile app which is soon to be released on the google play store.

Shakila loves travelling and experiencing new places and cultures as it allows her to interact with different kinds of people, giving her an opportunity to create awareness on life with blindness. Her other initiatives include an eight year old Audio Descriptive movie club, that allows blind and visually impaired people  to come together to experience mainstream cinema.

Tune in to learn more about Shakila’s  work in the field of inclusion!

To access the podcast transcript, click on link: https://otter.ai/u/ku_lpUq2EUAJKNoPtqbqkRQLiZY

This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.

To support our work, kindly visit the link: https://scorefoundation.org.in/get-involved/

In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Peter Donovan, a visually impaired financial planner and a cricketer from Queensland, Australia.

Peter, who was born with Albinism, struggled with vision issues since childhood. After completing his education, he chose a financial institution to work as a financial planner. But the highlight of his career was his cricket journey, where he got to represent Australian National Blind Cricket team from 1987. Peter became the first captain of his team. He was part of the Australian cricket team that participated in the first Blind World Cup, held in New Delhi in 1998, as a partially blind B3 player. He was a left handed batsman and a right arm fast bowler.

Peter was also part of the founding team of the World Blind Cricket Counsel and served as a chairman in 2004.

Tune in to learn more about Peter’s impressive innings and the history of blind cricket in Australia.

To access the podcast transcript, click on link:  https://otter.ai/u/gM5mq__bBtmtfIZpRWnKKE8QKrQ

This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.

To support our work, kindly visit the link: https://scorefoundation.org.in/get-involved/

In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Pramit Bhargava, founder of Visioapps, a Gurugram-based startup, which developed the Louie Voice Control app, a 'virtual friend' to help visually impaired navigate digital apps.

Pramit graduated from India’s prestigious engineering and management institutions (IIT and IIM) and worked for global companies such as Unilever, Motorola, and Quest Diagnostics before losing his vision to the side-effects of medicine, impacting his Retina.

Vision loss took Pramit on a journey of finding a higher purpose, enabling him to use his software engineering background to create accessible apps for visually impaired people like himself.

Today his accessible louie app is used worldwide and has gained recognition in the Digital Accessibility space.

Tune in to hear about his experiences and learnings from his journey so far.

This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.

In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Sathish Kumar, a passionate digital accessibility engineer, accessibility coach, mentor, A11y blogger, editor, speaker and trainer.

Born blind, Sathish was enrolled in a blind school at the age four. His love affair for computers began at the age of seven when his school introduced him to computers with screen readers. He remembers it as a magical device.

An MPhil in English Literature, Sathish chose digital accessibility as his profession and through his career has achieved various milestones. He has given consultations, written VPATs, trained developers, testers and other stakeholders in digital accessibility. He speaks at developer forums, meetups, Wordcamps, A11y conferences like CSUN and authors and edits blogs.

Besides a technology enthusiast, Satish loves public speaking, audio editing, and playing keyboard and beat boxing.

Tune in to listen to his experiences!

To access the podcast transcript, click on link: https://otter.ai/u/6Cz3qWFT7niEVKS_Y3bfP56-nlo

This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.

In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Dr Sharad Philip, a practicing Psychiatrist and a Clinical Assistant professor in a prestigious public medical school in India.

Sharad and his two younger brothers were diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa and lost his vision at a young age, leading to challenges through his growing up years. Despite a discouraging eco system during his college years, Sharad was determined to study Science and not let his lack of sight become a barrier in achieving his dream of being in a medical profession.

Sharad had to go the extra mile to prove that he was as capable as his sighted peers, by taking up additional responsibilities, participating in activities to convince his teachers to see him for his abilities.  He completed his MBBS, MD and several diploma degrees in his specialized area to qualify as a doctor.

Today Dr Sharad works with people with substance abuse, their families, people with severe mental illnesses, children with intellectual disability and autism. He has traveled all over the world for International conferences to present his research papers and work, for which he has received many awards.

Tune into listen to his story of determination and grit in the face of unfavorable circumstances!

To access the podcast transcript, click on link: https://otter.ai/u/Q-Mz092oQy-GmqvehptHzFuqbcA

 This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.