Spoken English | Vision-Aid VOA

I am Megha Patangi, an Associate Company Secretary, presently working as an Associate Accessibility Engineer in TEKsystems Global Services Pvt Ltd, Bangalore. I also have a year of work experience with Cisco Systems India Pvt Ltd, as a Service Request Administrator.

I am a person with visual impairment, due to Retinitis Pigmentosa. Though born as a sighted child, I started using glasses at the age of 3. Being unaware of my deficiency, experiencing gradual and unidentifiable vision loss, with little struggle and bullied by classmates, but with the immense support of academic teachers, I completed my education. Along with graduation, I chose Interior Designing as my career and started my professional courses for the same. After completing one-year degree certification, color blindness forced me to redesign my own career. Post-graduation, I enrolled for Company Secretaryship and qualified as an ACS Megha Patangi, after 6 years of the creative journey, of implementing my own solutions to every problem statement.

Even this did not turn to be a right fit for me and then finally realizing the need for technology, I learned screen reader software and mobility, in an NGO and gained knowledge about the need for accessibility. This paved my way and helped me to once again redesign my career towards the field of Digital Accessibility Testing.

I have also trained visually impaired professionals with MS Excel, as a volunteer trainer for Enable India Organisation. Have presented talks on Digital Accessibility in Mitra Jyothi Organisation and I am also contributing in various projects as a volunteer.

Currently, I am a Training assistant, for the Digital Accessibility Testing Training Program, of vision Aid and looking ahead to be a trainer for the same.

Travelling, cooking, anchoring, and involving in adventurous activities are some of my other areas of interest and passion.

Megha Patangi is a people’s person and an intuitive trainer, with more than 3 years of industry experience. She currently works with an IT company as an Associate Accessibility Engineer and contributes towards providing solutions to make digital space accessible for people round the globe.

With a diverse academic background, Megha after graduating from Calcutta University, , with her creative skills, went through a training on Interior Designing from INIFD. Along with this, she qualified as an Associate Company Secretary (ACS) in 2015.Experiencing the challenges of inaccessibility, in both streams, she directed her way towards accessibility testing, with an ambition of providing accessible solutions for people with diverse goals and ambitions.

Megha has been a teaching Assistant, in two batches of Digital Accessibility Testing Training, a Vision Aid’s online live training program on web accessibility testing. She has also worked with couple of other NGOs towards training candidates for using MS Office applications with screen readers. Apart from being adventurous, Megha is also a spontaneous show anchor. She believes in spirituality and is a regular practitioner of yoga and meditation.

Megha through her 3years of work experience, figured out that, where majority of our communication is non-verbal, through gestures and body language, this becomes a big challenge and barrier for visually impaired individuals. Despite of qualification, knowledge and profound job profiles, they are unable to navigate the social space and build a healthy network.
With the Work Place Etiquettes Training program, Megha aims to help students develop the right skills, which will enable them not only to get into their dream job, but they will also be able to make their inaccessible communication space, accessible.

Tanvi currently engaged in MA(English) and has done her Bachelors of Education (b.ed) and BA (English ) Hons. I have experience teaching in NGOs, private schools as well as a government school.

Tanvi is trained in making and delivering effective Lesson Plans and conducting Activities and making effective assessment tools, also an expert in Ms -Word, Ms excel, PowerPoint presentation, and diverse communication technologies. I am part of Vision Aid since November 2020 and working as an educator, it’s my interest as well as a profession to teach no matter who my students are. I like to provide the information and help them to overcome their doubts.

English being my main subject both in BA and B.ed I have got to learn many things about the subject and how to teach this subject, though I am a fresher but i have gained lot of experience of teaching English in various NGOs and schools during my internship, so i am willing to use that experience and teach students in future.

Tanvi is inspired by this Vision Aid reputation for educational excellence and for encouraging creativity through its renowned program. I am extremely motivated to introduce my teaching strategies. I feel confident that I could help students improve their scores and opportunities for success.

Rita Vachani has over 20 years of technology leadership experience in the telecommunications industry. She retired from Verizon as Vice President of Information Technology, part of the senior management team of the company. Prior to this, Rita was Executive Director, Program Management, responsible for managing the design and delivery of a new systems suite that enabled Verizon to launch its high-speed residential all-fiber service (FiOS).

For the past 5 years, Rita has been actively volunteering with organizations focused on education of underserved and underprivileged populations. Rita joined Vision-Aid’s Board of Directors in 2017. She also serves on the Communications Advisory Committee of the Town of Lexington, MA.

Rita holds a PhD in Operations Research from MIT and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Confident, motivated and personable, Chandrima Ghosh is an aspiring ESL Trainer / Teacher who intends to make a career in teaching. She topped her college (Lady Brabourne College) at the graduation level and completed her Post Graduation in English under Calcutta University with a First Class. Currently, she is an empanelled IELTS trainer at Ufaber Edutech.

Chandrima believes that education can be given under the guise of entertainment and thus aims to make the classroom more student oriented with the aid of stories, games and discussions. Her grasp over the English language coupled with her emotional intelligence helps her connect with students, both children and adults alike. She is dependable and to that end, detail and result oriented.

Chandrima has recently joined Vision Aid to bring her skills to bear in its service as well as hone them further.

When she is not working, you can catch her sleeping, spending time with dogs, binge watching Netflix or reading memes.

Sridhar Venigandla is a Friendly and outgoing person with B. Tech, MBA, (MA Psychology) and currently pursuing LLB. Ae also have 11+ years’ experience in Training, Project management, Consulting, with a built up background in various verticals lice Education, Defence Labs, Government and IT sectors.

Prior to Vision-Aid he worked with Revenue department of Andhra Pradesh as Analyst where he conducted several workshops for training revenue employees on technology, he also has experience in training students with NIIT Vizag.

He is having good knowledge in Digital Marketing and a hobby Graphologist.

Sridhar recently joined Vision-Aid as Sr. Program Manager cum Trainer.

Ashutosh is a B-Tech student studying in College of Engineering Trivandrum. He has Excellent experience in teaching coupled with Leadership roles (he run’s a Karate Dojo) gives him a winning combination in teaching English in your esteemed organization.

He has a rich of experience working on magazines (magazine editor in both his School and College days, advertising for his Dojo) which includes writing of ads, covers, articles etc. He is also a very passionate and experienced teacher and has got his blackbelt at the age of 14. His passion for teaching English stems from the fact that he speaks English at home and has frequently given children around his locality English tuitions.

He plans on completing his B.Tech in the year 2023 and is an accomplished swimmer and a basketball player.

Vaishnavi has completed her graduation in Psychology, Media Studies and English Literature, at Symbiosis International University. She has always been drawn to volunteering and working in organizations that aim to empower individuals facing challenges due to their circumstances.

Her interest in teaching began in high school and has rapidly grown ever since. She has previously volunteered and interned at organizations that teach children and adults from underprivileged backgrounds, as well as at organizations that work with individuals with intellectual challenges. She is keen on pursuing a profession as a counselling psychologist.

Sonal loves to work with children, and mentors them to inspire growth mindset in them. She has a motto for all her students —-‘You succeed, when you help others succeed’.

Sonal is a ‘connector’ at heart and she believes in collaborative learning.

Sonal has a PhD in Physics, and is an active learner on various MOOC platforms. She has over 30 years of experience in teaching at various levels and over 10000 hours of experience learning on MOOCs, that has transformed her life.

At Vision-Aid, Sonal has mentored about a dozen students over four years, all of whom have introduced her to the beautiful world of Visually challenged and have be one Sonal’s core team of young mentors. According to Sonal, these students are her true teachers in life. At Vision-Aid, Sonal has shared and spreaded ‘love of learning’ on MOOCs among all those she has mentored. She wants to spread ‘growth mindset’, that motivates Learning without Limits to everyone and everywhere, including among those who are visually challenged. She has recently started a silent movement —#empoweringthroughEducationforAll. She hopes to get the momentum to this movement through the new batch of Vision-Aid students in 2021.

Besides volunteering at Vision-Aid, Sonal is an active volunteer at the MIT museum, for over 10 years. She also volunteers for one of the largest MOOC provider, Coursera, as a ‘community mentor’, as well as ‘a beta tester’. Here, Sonal has had opportunity to mentor several oof her favorite classes as a community mentor in past years. She continues to be an avid beta tester on Coursera, and have beta tested several hundred classes on variety of subject areas. She considers herself to be very fortunate to get such an opportunity to expand her learning while helping. Many of Sonal’s Vision-Aid students have beta testers themselves and are helping the MOOC providers by providing useful feedback about accessibility.

Here is Sonal’s philosophy about learning on MOOCs in her own words, —

‘the most important thing is not how well you do in the course or how many certificates and degrees you earn, but how you apply what you learn to connect with the world, improve yourself, inspire others to learn and help others in every way possible. This is really empowering for everyone. We all have something interesting to teach others. On MOOCs we get this wonderful opportunity to learn and share as a global community. Together we can make this world a better place for everyone!’

Palaniappan Nallalagappan is a skilled software architect in the space of data management, visualization and advanced analytics. He has 19+ years of progressive career spanning across Technology Consulting, Solution Architecture, Data Integration, Data Lake Design, Analytics & Visualization.

He has a proven track record in delivering large scale Enterprise Data Management engagements, in nurturing CoE (Center of Excellence), and successful in building solution accelerators & Intellectual Proprietary products that re-define the customer experience.

Blended with unique combination of skills – Engineering degree with distinction, MBA from University of Melbourne, Hands-on in Python, Spark, NLP, AWS & Azure along with legacy DW / BI technologies., Certified by NSE academy for Capital Markets Fundamentals & AWS Certified Solutions Architect.

Aditi Shah is a Technology enthusiast with over five years of experience in the Cybersecurity space. She currently works at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington as a Data and Applied Scientist with their security response team.
On the academic front, Aditi owns a Bachelors and a Masters in Information Technology from University of Mumbai, India along with a Masters in Cybersecurity from the Georgia Institute of Technology, U.S.A.
She has trained over ten blind children to get independent using Assistive Technology and is also actively involved in Researching accessible solutions for persons with vision impairment. Her work around usable Audio APTCH

As was published at the 16th symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2020 conference) and bagged the distinguished paper award. Apart from being a life long learner and a voracious reader, Aditi loves experimenting in the kitchen and talking to new people in her free time.

With the Work Place Etiquettes Training program, Aditi aims to help students develop the right verbal and non-verbal communication skills to land a job in the Corporate sector while also becoming more effective at speaking in public.

Pinky Gupta has done her graduation in BBA. She has completed technical courses in accessibility, Python, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. She is currently serving as an accessibility tester for Tech Systems, Bangalore.

Pinky is associated with DAT program as teaching assistant , supporting the students with assignments and homeworks and engages then in creative ways of understanding accessibility issues.

Pinky’s interests range from classical music to training students in Basic Computers, MS Office, English communication, and accessibility testing in NGOs such as , Divya Jyothi-Mysore, Enable India-Bangalore, and Vision aid.

She mentors many differently abled individuals and their families by giving directions regarding their education, additional certifications, finding out assistive aids, making them self-reliant and placements etc.

She has given seminars on topics like “Accessibility testing as a career” and “Assistive aids and digital accessibility” for “Rotary club, Bangalore ” and “Prajahita” foundation, Kerala”.

She has worked in multiple roles in Cisco Systems Bangalore, as Project co-ordinator, Quality Analyst and as a Team Lead, she has managed 2 different projects.

For her achievements, Pinky Gupta has received the “Best physically challenged woman award for 2018-19 from the Foundation for art and culture for deaf, Bangalore.

Bhargav Vaghasiya , IT professional from Bangalore is IAAP and Deque certified web accessibility specialist and worked in web and mobile accessibility auditing. He has trained about 30 students in Digital Accessibility Testing.

Bhargav Vaghasiya is first Visually impaired Computer science (Batcheler of computer application) from Gujarat. He is currently working as software engineer at Bengaluru and co-instructor for Digital accessibility testing training at Vision aid. He has hands on experience in various assistive technologies such as screen readers, Braille display and speech recognition and Accessibility evaluation tools. He is a IAAP and Deque certified web accessibility specialist and worked in web and mobile accessibility auditing. He has good experience in Windows, Android and iOS. He works closely with design and development teams and helps to bring the best products in terms of both usability and accessibility. He has the ability to communicate the requirements and make the various stakeholders of SDLC understand the accessibility requirements.

He has built tools to conduct the exam for DAT training. He has introduced and implemented Google classroom tool in DAT 2 for students and trainers to maintain all the assignments in a professional way. Also he was awarded twice by his company in recognition of his core values of commitment and dedication in handling of challenging situations, team work and supporting team in training and mentoring.

Justin with post graduation in Economics is an experienced trainer in Spoken English and is passionate about teaching Spoken English. He engages students in the class very well. Students look upto him, enjoy his teaching and look forward to his classes.

He has been associated with Visionaid since 2019. He trains students in the SEP program and also supports the DAT team as a teaching assistant. The way students are picking up English speaking in the SEP program, is a source of joy to him.

Justin finds pleasure in music, playing chess, spirituality, reading, and creativity. He is active in Rotary club activities for PWD.

Justin is also the editor of “Insight” a quarterly braille magazine published by Mitra Jyothi.

Ashwin is an IAAP (International association of accessibility professionals) and Section 508 Trusted Tester certified web accessibility specialist with many years of experience in digital accessibility space. He has worked as a consultant for IIIT-B, Albertsons group of companies and various other startup companies. He is currently designated at Infosys Limited as Technical Test Lead.

His expertise is to evaluate and audit websites, web applications, software applications, mobile apps and electronic documents for accessibility conformance. His role also includes strategic planning and implementation of accessibility best practices in software development life cycle and software testing life cycles. His passion towards inclusive digital ecosystem is the driving force behind his interests in evangelizing, sensitizing and training in digital accessibility space.

He also brings in 20+ years of work experience as Graphic & UI Designer out of which his recent 9 years was a freelance position on world’s largest outsource portal where he have worked for 20000+ hours on 250+ projects with 150+ overseas clients with 100% job success rate.

1. Vision-Aid soon to announce next Python Language Training to enable employment opportunities in IT space.. Our training starts with instructor-based teaching using Coursera/ University of Michigan curriculum and on completion, students earn Coursera / University of Michigan Certificates. Our trainers are senior professionals from IT industries sharing their rich practical experience.

2. Vision-Aid soon to announce next Digital Accessibility Testing Training (DATT), which is one of the flagship Training Courses undertaken by Vision-Aid. Students undergo a rigorous program of training to earn recognized certifications ( Deque University ). Vision-Aid is proud to produce professionally trained Digital Accessibility testers, ready for gainful employment across IT industries.

3. Vision-Aid soon to announce next Spoken English program, which is imparted to students at the beginner and intermediate level. Vision-Aid with Subject Matter experts has created end-to-end learning content, tracking, and assessing mechanisms for developing a predefined level of skill in spoken English

4. Our Current Webinar Series has concluded. We will be back soon. Please signup for our newsletter to know when the next series start.

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