Thanks to the startup’s projects, blind and partially sighted children can learn Braille and identify objects in the environment.
A meeting with visually impaired children and getting acquainted with their daily difficulties was the major reason for the establishment of a startup from Rijeka called Braille Riddles, which is oriented towards education of blind and visually impaired children, reports Poslovni.hr on January 26, 2017.
Eight students from universities in Rijeka, Zagreb and Dublin noticed that people suffering from visual impairment face limited opportunities for personal development in a large number of situations in everyday life, which greatly affects their integration into society. Thus they conceived, and shortly thereafter created, a line of accessible educational aids for the blind and visually impaired children.
The realization of the project was facilitated by their entry into the startup programme of the town of Rijeka, where during the six-month incubation period they attended a range of workshops, had an opportunity to rely on the help of mentors and, ultimately, thanks to the cooperation with Sven Maričić, turn their ideas into tangible products.
“The advantage of these products is that they allow children, in an interesting and fun way, to start learning the Braille writing system, and thus develop their own cognitive and intellectual abilities, which has as the ultimate goal the improvement in the quality of life”, said Toma Babić, one of the Braille Riddles team members. He pointed out that, thanks to their ideas, children not only learn Braille, but at the same time they identify objects from the environment, which greatly contributes to the understanding of spatial orientation.
“Our plans for the future include expanding the range of current products by creating a puzzle with different motifs, and further enhancement and expansion of the design so that the products become adapted to different age groups. In addition, we plan to develop our aids in the direction of crating novel products”, said Babić. He added that one of the goals is fundraising and organizing investments in order to be able to turn their plans into reality, which would help blind and visually impaired children create better opportunities to develop their skills.
In addition to Toma Babić, the Braille Riddles team includes Dino Alagić, Maja Buljan, Dario Džepina, Ante Gugić, Lovro Ivanković, Martin Sedlić and Josip Šore.
