Nclude
The NClude Initiative addresses the exclusion of people with disabilities in India from essential information and employment opportunities, largely due to inaccessible digital content. With 70% of this community unemployed, costing the economy around $112 billion annually, the initiative aims to bridge this gap using large language models (LLMs). By converting inaccessible content into accessible formats and offering career guidance, NClude opens up new educational and professional avenues for the disabled community in India, ensuring equal opportunities for all.
Project Overview
The NClude Initiative addresses the exclusion of people with disabilities in India from essential information and employment opportunities, largely due to inaccessible digital content. With 70% of this community unemployed, costing the economy around $112 billion annually, the initiative aims to bridge this gap using large language models (LLMs). By converting inaccessible content into accessible formats and offering career guidance, NClude opens up new educational and professional avenues for the disabled community in India, ensuring equal opportunities for all.
Project Goal
The goal of NClude is to create a fully accessible digital ecosystem for people with disabilities in India by transforming complex content into user-friendly formats. By leveraging AI to provide tailored career recommendations, job listings, and civic information in local languages, the initiative seeks to empower the disabled community with tools for self-reliance and opportunities for personal growth, education, and employment.
Project Team
The NClude Initiative is led by Kartik Sawhney, an award-winning entrepreneur and disability advocate, with a history of developing AI-powered solutions for accessibility. Backed by major partners like UNICEF and UNFPA, the initiative draws from the lived experiences of persons with disabilities to inform its technological advancements, ensuring that the tools developed are practical and impactful.
Top Achievements
Content Accessibility Conversion: The initiative successfully made 800,000 previously inaccessible pages accessible, converting documents, audio, and video into formats that people with disabilities can use.
Career Discovery Bot: NClude launched a career discovery bot that suggests career paths and educational opportunities, personalized to each user’s skills, interests, and abilities, improving access to inclusive education and employment.
Job Recommendations: It integrated job listing features, recommending positions at inclusive companies, enabling users to access employment opportunities that cater to their specific needs.
Partnerships: The project has been deployed by UNICEF and UNFPA, demonstrating strong global support and credibility for its innovative solutions to accessibility challenges.
Key Learnings
Need for Localized Content: Many users highlighted the importance of having information and resources in local languages and formats that cater to their specific disabilities, making it essential to continue developing region-specific solutions.
Technology as an Enabler: The project reinforced the idea that AI and digital technology can drastically enhance access to education and employment for the disability community, but there is still much room for growth in refining these tools to address diverse needs.
Challenges in Current Solutions: Users reported ongoing issues with inaccessible textbooks and digital content, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating that despite existing tools, major barriers remain in achieving full digital inclusion
Future Plans
Scaling Technology-Driven Programs: Going forward, NClude will focus heavily on scaling its technology solutions, ensuring that every program and line of code developed has a tangible impact on the community, with user feedback driving continuous improvement.
Collaborative Growth: NClude seeks to build a community-driven approach, encouraging users and stakeholders to share challenges and ideas on how technology can further address the barriers faced by individuals with disabilities​