Boy at 8 Creates an App to Help Kids with Dyslexia & Learning Disabilities

Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities prevalent in children. As per the report by Dyslexia Assessment for Languages of India (DALI) and Ministry of Health & Science, 1 in 6 children has reading problems, and there are nearly 35 million children with dyslexia studying in schools in India. The disability makes it difficult for children to learn in a regular classroom setting. To tackle this situation, 8-year-old Souradeep Sarkar from Burdwan has created the DYSXA app, which is a learning aid app for dyslexic kids that enables them to learn alphabets and numbers.

Significantly, dyslexia has a biological basis and occurs because of differences in brain wiring. India doesn’t have standardized and validated assessment tools to diagnose the symptoms in kids. While learning to code on the WhiteHat Jr platform, Souradeep got inspired by his father, who encouraged him to create an app to help dyslexic kids in their learning process. Once logged in, the app aids in learning, forming words, has animation for words like birds, pictures of objects, etc., and pronounces the word to help kids learn the pronunciation of the word fed in the app. The app also has a separate colour and sound for every letter, and quizzes to help kids practice and identify the correct word or spellings.

Karan Bajaj, Founder and CEO, WhiteHat Jr, said that in today’s time, kids are very aware of societal issues and want to contribute in their own way to address them. When kids are taught to code, that does not only provide a well-structured way to introduce them to rational thinking and problem-solving skills, but also improves their logical and analytical thinking, and increases creativity and concentration. Children as little as 6-year-olds, can start to learn coding. And they can prepare themselves for the future. They are witnessing many young kids like Souradeep creating some extremely creative, high utility digital applications that will make a lasting impact on the world,” he said. 

Another example is of 9-year-old Mae Mae from Shillong, who has created the Anti-Bullying app for kids to report bullies anonymously and alert their parents, teachers, and friends about them. Mae Mae and her sister had faced bullying at school, and she wanted to put an end to this. While learning to code on the WhiteHat Jr platform, Mae Mae thought of using her learning to create an app to help other kids cope with bullies. Once logged in, the child can anonymously share details of the incident including the name of the bully and give a detailed explanation of how they were mistreated. This will notify their parents and teachers and encourage them to take necessary disciplinary action to nip the problem in the bud.

16-year-old Jishnu Baruah from Dibrugarh, Assam has created the Light Bag app which allows kids to shed offload from their school bags. While going to school, he saw kids struggle with carrying heavy bags to school every day and got the idea to create the app. With the help of WhiteHat Jr., he made the app that allows teachers to update the name of the books and notebooks they want the student to carry on a specific day. The app provides an estimate of the weight in the student’s bag and shows animations to the teachers to convey the student’s discomfort depending on the weight of the bag. Based on the weight calculations, teachers can reduce the number of books so that students can carry a lighter bag to school.

It is on WhiteHat Jr, an EdTech startup, that all these kids are learning to code. It teaches coding to kids between 6 to 14 years of age. Teaching cutting-edge curriculum on technologies like AI, robotics, machine learning and space tech, the startup aims to harness natural creativity of kids and shift their mindset from being consumers to creators at an early age. After seeing great success for its online platform, the company is working to bring its AI and robotics coding curriculum to schools across the country. 

It has started a program where top 1% of kids on the platform will have a chance to get an all-expense-paid trip along with one of their parents to Silicon Valley in the USA to be mentored by top entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. They are also soon starting a 15 under 15 fellowship wherein WhiteHat Jr will help the top 15 kids on the platform incubate their own startups and provide a $15000 fellowship to them.