What is the name of your solution?
Inclusive engagement through the right tool
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
Key2enable is the FIRST and ONLY assistive EdTech company that makes an A-Z holistic solution for people with disabilities.
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
We have realized that people with physical and motor skills disabilities have severe difficulty in expression and are often ignored due to their inability to showcase their intellectual ability. However, with proper intellectual stimulation, especially in early childhood for children, can significantly accelerate their progress. Special educators, occupational therapists and parents have a hard time to come up with ways to communicate or tutor them and the whole process does not address the problem and is extremely cumbersome. On the other hand, only a fraction can afford assistive technology as they are usually very expensive and can be afforded only by a handful.
What is your solution?
We have identified this gap between need and affordability. We have addressed the “human factors” of “engagement” and “curiosity”, that other assistive tech companies have ignored, to come up with a holistic solution comprising of hardware and software that can enable people with severe physical and motor skills disabilities to communicate, learn, engage, and also autonomously use technology. Thus, we are affordable and are the final answer to the woes of the special educators, professionals of rehabilitation and parents of the PwDs.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
We serve any person who has severe physical and motor skills disability which limits their expression and learning abilities.
The nucleus of our hardware solution is called Key-X, an innovative keyboard that enables anyone with severe motor disabilities to fully access computers, tablets, and smartphones with just nine color coded iconographic keys that need dual sequential touch to enable a command. Further there are allied accessories to it that enable people with more restrictive physical disabilities to use the Key-X with ease. We also have an online educational platform, that enables special educators, occupational therapists and parents of PwDs to formulate any curriculum and syllabi on it such that it can be used to tutor them. This comes with an accessibility option which lets them use the Key-X as the input medium.
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Jose Rubinger Filho
Has worked with tech brands and been a business developer for 30+ years, with experience in hardware and software engineering, working with governments around the world has understood the problem faced by PwDs community from a technical aspect.
William de Oliveira
Being the father of a child with disabilities, he understood the pain first hand and was desperately seeking solutions to ease his problem. He engaged with his child closely in order to better the solution to be more suitable to his needs and the needs of million others like him.
Alexandre Assis
Being a software with 20+ years experience in technology for education, he deeply knew the pedagogical aspects of tech pertaining to education.
Adriano Assis
An Electronics engineer, developer and inclusion specialist with 11 years of experience in the assistive technology field, he has worked closely with Glieson, whose idea was the solution to begin with. He was born with Cerebral Palsy and being non verbal and having very limited motor skills, it took him 8 years to graduate in Computer Science. He came up with the idea, realizing that there were millions like him who were decelerated due to the lack of a tool appropriate to address the difficulties. Adriano gave life to his vision along with Jose.
Indranil "Neil" Chatterjee
India born and educated in the United States, is a corporate strategy and partnerships professional with a demonstrated history of working in business strategy and development. 13+ years’ experience in corporate communications, business development, relationship building, customer service, strategizing, budgeting, planning, quality control and procurement. Bachelor's in Business Administration, with a specialization in business strategy formulation and management. Neil makes sure that the business stays sustainable and remains viable.
We have deployed our solution in more than 700 schools, 150 rehab centers and have more than 9000 users worldwide, this gives us continuous feedback on what works the best and we keep bettering with each passing day.
We conduct periodic visits to these schools and have Special Educators and Occupational Therapists giving us feedback closely, in order to build better curriculums suiting the needs of each specific disability.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Enable personalized learning and individualized instruction for learners who are most at risk for disengagement and school drop-out
Where our solution team is headquartered or located:
St. Louis, MO, USAOur solution's stage of development:
GrowthHow many people does your solution currently serve?
19000
Why are you applying to Solve?
Financial: Support in grants and raise funds in order to develop in R&D and grow to others markets of the world where affordability of AT is a major problem. Changes in design aspects and establish a supply chain and hire more skilled professionals.
Technical: We need to connect with MIT's exclusive industry experts to gain tech knowhow or co-create the first real-time data repository mapping the development curve of children with disabilities.
Cultural: Leveraging on the MIT events and gaining exposure and visibility in media.
Market: Important influential industry leader and corporate connects via the MIT's network. This might help us secure scale and lower cost of production, which would lead us to enter markets with lower incomes solving the affordability problem.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Business model (e.g. product-market fit, strategy & development)
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Jose Rubinger Filho/Indranil Chatterjee
What makes your solution innovative?
- Our solution is built on the two pivotal human factors that other AT companies completely ignored, "Curiosity" and "Engagement". Our design invokes curiosity which leads to engagement and further, learning and development. The sense of accomplishment creates motivation and accelerates learning.
- We are based on "one size fits all" tech, which means we address multiple disabilities at the same time and that covers more than 80% of disabilities found in a classroom setting. Most AT are highly individualized and cannot be used by multiple users at the same time.
- Our tech is built on "universal design", and can be used by children with and WITHOUT disabilities, being a medium of engagement between them.
- We are 50% less expensive than our contemporaries, keeping in mind the humongous gap between "need and affordability".
Hence all of these collectively put together, put us in an advantage over others in the same product space.
What are your impact goals for the next year and the next five years, and how will you achieve them?
Next Year:- We wish to maximize our market share within our Serviceable Obtainable Market and simultaneously built the real-time data repository mapping the development curve of children with disabilities. This would help academics to make an informed decision regarding the pedagogical behavioral patterns and curriculums of different age groups and disabilities.
Next 5 years:- We aspire to procure bigger orders and achieve scale of operations, such that would bring our cost of production by 50%. This would enable us to offer our solution at lower costs and we would be able to address the affordability problem in under developed and developing countries and bridge the gap between need and affordability with minimal margins.
How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?
At Key2enable, we believe in "being a solver". We understand the problems that young learners with disabilities face and thus we came up with our amalgamative solution.
- Hardware: We have devised a platform that collects input data from our assistive device "Key-X" and it maps the time intervals between inputs as a response to the tasks in the curriculum. This helps the academics and educators to understand the various matrices like interest levels, engagement and comprehension.
- Software: Our online learning platform collects data from the task responses given by a student and the report can be reviewed by the teacher, where she gets to see the number of errors, time taken and response tendencies.
- Strategic perspective: We keep monitoring our business operations in order to make sure the impact is maximum.
- Pedagogical feedback: We maintain a close contact with teachers in order to be updated at all times about the progress of children with more restrictive disabilities, who use our solution.
- UN SDGs:
- SDG 4 - Quality Education - We have always been advocates of inclusive education. We have spoken to various governments around the world and have been successful in making more than 450 schools inclusive. We have been addressing this SDG since our inception.
- SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth - We have started speaking to a handful of corporates in order to make the workplace inclusive and organize workshops to educate workforces to better understand inclusivity. Our solution furthermore has enabled young adults to attend University and be autonomous, which was an extremely rare possibility due to their motor skills limitations.
- SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities - Key2enable has been actively working to address inequalities in schools and exclusive tendencies. We also target our expansive markets based on the inclusive situation in the country.
What is your theory of change?
Theory of Change
Problem Statement
Children with disabilities around the world are excluded from engaging in education
Inputs
Activities
Outputs
Short-Term Outcomes
Mid-Term Outcomes
Long-Term Outcomes
Resources needed to accomplish our activities
· Financial Capital
· Technologies
· Specialists
· Partnerships
· Production Materials
Activities needed to reach our outcomes
· Workshops
· Trainings
· Learning activities
· Services on Subscription
· Policy advocacy
· Delivery of products
Tangible results we aspire to produce through our activities in the next 2 years
· 600 Schools being inclusive
· 12000 Children with disabilities empowered
· 6000 Teachers trained
· 24000 Parents
Outcomes expected of our intervention(s)
Changes in:
· Learning
· Awareness
· Knowledge
· Attitudes
· Skills
· Opinions
· Aspirations
· Motivations
Outcomes we want to see in our intervention timeframe
Changes in:
· Actions
· Behaviours
· Practices
· Decisions
· Policies
· Social actions
Outcomes we hope to observe beyond our intervention timeframe.
Changes in:
· Learning environment
· Social contexts
· Autonomy
· Engagement
Impact
Inculcation of our solution would lead to 12000 children being able to communicate and engage autonomously leading to accelerated learning
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
We use IoT, Hardware and Software, Arduino, Python, Java, unit, Html5, and we are starting with our Artificial Intelligence modules to propose tasks and activities based on the answers. We have developed a keyboard with an incorporated mouse function based on the needs of one of our co-founders, who was born with Cerebral Palsy. Based on his movements and also the lack of some, during more than two years we did some research on more than 30 schools and many rehabilitation centers to improve the features of this first tool. Then, we developed a blink sensor, pneumatic sensor, cheek sensor, triggers, head sensor, and a way to integrate all other Assistive Technology inside an All-in-One platform, including curriculum-based easy to build (by parents and teachers) with monitoring and follow-up activities (still under development). We may also use VR/AR with our solution.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technology
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
In which countries do you currently operate?
In which countries will you be operating within the next year?
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
How many people work on your solution team?
14
How long have you been working on your solution?
5 years
What is your approach to incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusivity into your work?
Our approach to incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusivity into our work is simple. We work as "all for one and one for all".
We are a company that started with the idea of a person with disability, conceptualized by a Brazilian, and business driven by an Indian.
We have a core team of dynamic women leading the way in marketing, education expertise and vision.
We are a tech startup with a social impact and our workplace values resonate with the same ideology. We believe in a glass door and glass ceiling work environment and full accommodation and adaptability to every minute aspect of every member of the team, to make the workplace an area of optimum comfort and productivity through innovative thinking.
What is your business model?
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Organizations (B2B)What is your plan for becoming financially sustainable?
Our Financial Plan is a combination of three revenue streams, though the primary channel is product sales transactions :
- Recurring revenue through sales on a subscription model (Special Education as a Service, SEaaS) to institutions, government tenders and distribution channels.
- Grants and awards through tech innovation challenges across the world.
- Fundraising campaign through conventional means such as Angel investing, VCs and Crowd Funding.
The above are planned throughout the next 3 years strategically to cover our expected expenses.
Solution Team
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IC
Mr Indranil "Neil" Chatterjee Chief Strategy Officer, Key2enable Assistive Technology -
Mr. Jose Rubinger Filho Co-founder & CEO, Key2enable Assistive Technology Inc.
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Our Organization
Key2enable Assistive Technology