They were blind to her abilities, her feat opened their eyes

Challenges have followed her throughout life, but Vidhya Y strode forward with determination to be one of the toppers of MSc in digital society course at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIITB).

Being visually challenged, her choice of subjects was rejected several times since childhood.

“I wanted to be a doctor, but there is no technology in India where blind people can study such subjects. My cousins used to help me learn. I was forced by the college authorities to take humanities in my pre university (PU) course. I fought with them, took science and scored 95%,” she said.

Her professor Janaki Srinivasan said, “We made a screen reader (software that converts text into speech) available for her. She was eager to go out and know more.”

Vidhya’s mother Pushpa said they thought she will not be able to achieve this. But she was determined.

Vidhya intends to set up a start-up which creates softwares for helping blind students learn subjects, particularly maths and science. She did her internship with Microsoft in ‘accessibility research’ (technique to help people with disabilities and aged population) with an intention to bring innovation in this concept.

While Vidhya scored 3.82 credits out of 4 in her subject, other two toppers of the college - Gaurav Kumar Jain scored the highest 3.91 in MTech and Anusha P S scored 3.86 in Integrated MTech.

Gaurav is an employee of Samsung company and the father of an eight-year-old. He said the three-year MTech course was hectic as he had to attend office too. He said his wife was of much help and support throughout his life and career.

“I am very proud of him. He is very sincere in what he does and deserves a gold medal being the topper,” said Vidhya, his wife.

Anusha, from integrated MTech batch, one of the toppers from the college said another student who discontinued the course deserved the medal better than her.

“I am excited for being one of the toppers, but did not expect it coming,” said Anusha.

Anusha is already placed in Direct i, an IT company in Bengaluru, and is looking forward to join the firm soon.

The three gold medalists and other award-winning students were honoured during the IIIT-B convocation ceremony on Sunday on its campus. As many as 269 students from various postgraduate programmes such as integrated MTech, MSc in digital society and sponsored MTech batches graduated on the day.

Dr Subhash Chandra Khuntia, chief secretary, was the guest  ofhonor. He said the country needs the skill and expertise of these students in fields such as environment, water consumption, data services, artificial intelligence and robotics.