Literacy Device 

 

The Problem

 

Many people in the developing world are illiterate and for this reason cannot read contracts (e.g., land contracts with the chiefs who may sell it for natural resource mining), medical instructions (and therefore take the wrong dose of medicine) or any other knowledge base (e.g., educational books). Simultaneously  the blind in the developed world do not always have access to immediate information in Braille.

 

The Hackathon Challenge

 

Developing a phone app that can scan typed and/or handwritten words and read them out loud and can thus help address the needs of both groups and perhaps even teach people to read and  write.