Rasoi ke Rahasya Host Payal Kapoor from Hyderabad Wins NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Awards 2021

Rasoi ke Rahasya, a YouTube channel by Payal Kapoor, is worth checking out. Through detailed audio tutorials, Payal, who is completely blind, wants to equip visually impaired people with the confidence to cook independently.

As a trained hotel management professional, cooking has always been a passion for Payal. However, owing to a crippling illness at the age of 22, Payal lost her eyesight, partial hearing, and became tactile-challenged. Despite this, she went on to continue her profession and give back to the society, in quiet yet effective and lasting ways. Instead of being cowed down by challenges that daunt most other humans, she ventured back to the kitchen and used her training and native genius to devise simple techniques to plan and organize the kitchen space and work safely with various potentially dangerous equipment around – cooking stoves, ovens, cutlery, and utensils. Since April 2020, Payal has been regularly publishing audio tutorials on her Youtube channel, Rasoi ke Rahasya. 

Payal has won the award in the category of Persons with Disabilities; Awards in this category are given to people with disabilities who have created an impact in Accessibility and Universal Design by designing consumer products with the aid of assistive technology in their personal and professional capacity.

List of all the 12 awardees:

Category A: Persons with Disabilities

Awards in this category are given to people with disabilities who have created an impact in Accessibility and Universal Design by designing consumer products with the aid of assistive technology in their personal and professional capacity

Ankit Rajiv Jindal - Bengaluru (Karnataka): 

A multi-faceted personality, Ankit is committed to empowerment of persons with disabilities and propagated accessibility and inclusion, through his contributions at all levels including technology, elections, mobility initiatives, social enterprises, advocacy and at corporate. He invented Signer AI, a digital sign language translator that converts speech/ text input into Indian Sign Language in real-time and also Mera Mitra, a website and a Google Assistant based chatbot designed to be a one stop shop for all information on accessibility and disability inclusion. 

Prateek Khandelwal – Bengaluru (Karnataka):

After becoming a paraplegic in 2014 due to an accident, Prateek became a wheelchair user. After realizing the serious issue of inaccessibility in India and the plight of millions of people with disabilities Prateek decided to transform lives by being an enabler. Rather than cribbing about the problem, he decided to become part of the solution himself. Through his start-up RampMyCity Prateek is providing simple accessibility solutions to places of public usage enabling more visibility and equal participation of the disabled population. He is not only the founder and Managing Director of RampMyCity Foundation and IBTB Pvt Ltd but also a TEDx Speaker, known for his views on accessibility as social entrepreneurship.

Payal Kapoor- Hyderabad (Telangana):

As a trained hotel management professional, cooking has always been a passion for Payal. However, owing to a crippling illness at the age of 22, Payal lost her eyesight, partial hearing, and became tactile-challenged. Despite this, she went on to continue her profession and give back to the society, in quiet yet effective and lasting ways. Instead of being cowed down by challenges that daunt most other humans, she ventured back to the kitchen and used her training and native genius to devise simple techniques to plan and organize the kitchen space and work safely with various potentially dangerous equipment around – cooking stoves, ovens, cutlery, and utensils. Since April 2020, Payal has been regularly publishing audio tutorials on her Youtube channel, Rasoi ke Rahasya. 

CAT B Working professionals  

Awards in this category are given to people who work for the cause of accessibility. She/ he may be an employee of an education institute/ NGO/ corporate/ government body that has taken up the cause or may be a consultant or freelancer who has devoted her/ his time for the cause. 

Paul Gerard D Souza, Bengaluru (Karnataka):

His company, Touchétech Labs, has been providing Braille Cell Modules to students, researchers and even companies like Thinkerbell Labs. He also developed a tactile drawing tool caller Roulette that enabled the Visually Impaired to draw lines on commonly available photocopying grade paper. 

Madhav Ajay Lavakare, New Delhi:

In 2017, When Madhav was in 11th grade in high-school, his friend who was hard of hearing dropped out of school because day-to-day communication with other students was becoming an insurmountable problem. Madhav tried to understand his problem better and began looking for solutions that could help him. Madhav learned that most deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals use a combination of assistive technology solutions for better communication but they are often unaffordable, inconvenient, or inaccessible.

After an intensive 5year research he came up with TranscribeGlass, an assistive technology device for deaf, hard of hearing and elderly, fills the void with an affordable, comfortable, accessible, convenient real-time heads-up captioning solution, especially in developing countries.

Dr. Hema Parikh, Vadodara (Gujarat):

She has contributed to the development of Ummeed Cerebral Palsy Centre, launched in 2016. While treating paediatric patients Dr. Hema came across a girl, Kinjal, who had Cerebral Palsy (CP). It was during the treatment of Kinjal that the idea of Ummeed Cerebral Palsy Centre, came to her mind. The Centre caters to children with CP, autism, intellectual disability, down syndrome, behavioural disorders, etc, with homoeopathic medicines and other therapies. The Motto of the Centre is ‘Reaching to the Unreached.’

CAT C companies or organisations

Awards in this category are given to those companies or organisations who have taken up the cause of Accessibility and Universal Design in areas such as built environment, transport infrastructure, service provision, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), universally designed consumer products, mobility & independent living aids, or assistive technology. 

Samsara Paediacare (OPC) Private Limited, Mumbai (Maharashtra):

Samsara Paediacare (OPC) Pvt Ltd is an assistive technology company, which has designed ‘Boond’, a feeder through which cleft babies are fed a drop at a time. Boond ensures that the cleft babies are fed safely from birth until year one through all milestone surgeries, in accordance with medical compliances.

Rymo Technologies Private Limited, Mumbai (Maharashtra):

Rymo Technologies Private Limited's Mobi L support product is a portable robotic rehabilitation device which helps individuals undergoing physiotherapy recover faster by providing personalised training. It occupies only 2sq ft of floor space and is 10 times more affordable in comparison to other products in the market. 

India Signing Hands Private Limited, Mumbai (Maharashtra):

Main objective of India Signing Hands is to develop the most feasible solution to the ongoing accessibility issues faced by the deaf population in India. ISH broadcasts daily news and entertainment online in deaf friendly accessible formats including visual images with titles, voice-over and closed captions. Moreover, it has developed ISL courses for parents who have children with hearing disability and also with doctors, public service officers’ employers encouraging them to communicate with customers who are deaf. 

Vispala Technologies Private Limited, Kolkata (West Bengal) 

Through frugal engineering and 3D printed design and manufacturing, Vispala has brought comfortable and lightweight products in affordable price range, with quality, durability, aesthetics, and features that are available in much high-priced products. The company aims to build a landmark sustainable social enterprise in the robotics for disabilities space. 

NCPEDP- Mphasis Javed Abidi Public Policy Award

Subhash Chandra Vashisth - New Delhi:

Subhash is a Lawyer and a Specialist in Accessibility, Universal Design & Diversity Inclusion. He is a Certified Professional in Accessible Built Environments Level III - Expert (CPABE Level III), the first in India to achieve this credential. He co-founded the Centre for Accessibility in Built Environment Foundation on 01 April 2016. He authored “Handbook on Barrier Free Urban Infrastructure" highlighting the lack of accessibility in urban infrastructure and giving out a comparative study of national standards and international best practices. 

Special Jury Award

Phonologix Health Solutions Private Limited, Kochi (Kerela):

Launched in January 2020 to provide online speech therapy to children with speech, language, and communication disorders, Phonologix Health Solutions aims to make speech therapy more accessible and affordable to approximately 20 million children with disorders or delays that affect their speech, language and communication. The sessions are conducted online through the use of technology and automation, irrespective of the beneficiary’s location, hence making it more accessible and convenient.