We were very concerned about the discrimination experienced by (our) colleagues living with disabilities.
Jakarta (ANTARA) - Their concern over the discrimination faced by persons living with disabilities led six young innovators to develop an application called TeDi or Teman Disabilitas (Friend for People with Disabilities).

All six were college students who were participating in the 2022 Bangkit program, the Education, Culture, Research, and Technology Ministry’s career development program in the information and technology sector, which is also a part of the ministry’s Freedom of Learning in Campus (MBKM) program.

“We were very concerned about the discrimination experienced by (our) colleagues living with disabilities. At that time, we saw a friend with disabilities get rejected by online motorcycle taxi drivers," one of the innovators and a student of Padjadjaran University Najma said.

She recounted one occasion when her deaf colleague had a miscommunication with a security officer who did not understand sign language and thought that the colleague was mocking him—and it caused a scene.

Therefore, Najma and her team decided to make the application to help people understand what people living with disabilities are trying to convey.

“We conducted some research and found that there was no app that could facilitate many types of disabilities at once. Usually, one app is only for one type of disability (for instance, only to help deaf people). Hence, we decided to create an app, which could help many types of disabilities,” she said.

According to 2019 data from the World Health Organization (WHO), about 40 percent of people living with disabilities have more than one type of disability. The United Nations has declared December 3 as the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

TeDi is the first Indonesian mobile app whose features can serve users with three types of disabilities at once, namely the blind, deaf, and speech impaired.

There are three features for visually impaired people in the app, namely for object, currency, and text detection.

The object detector can help the visually impaired recognize objects in front of them; the currency detector can identify the denomination of a currency note; while the text detector can help the visually impaired read books.

Najma said that the application tells users about objects, currency, and text through voice.

Another member of the team, Hazlan Muhammad Qodri, said that in the near future, the team will add a color detection feature to help blind persons.

"There will also be other additional features, namely ‘Family Help’, thus if you (the users) need help, there will be a notification on the mobile phone of (the users’) friend or family member," he informed.

Meanwhile, for the deaf and speech-impaired people, TeDi has an Indonesian sign language (BISINDO) translator feature, as many people do not understand the language.

The development of the TeDi app was aimed at making the life of people with disabilities easier. It was one of the 15 best projects of the 2022 Bangkit program.

Each selected project received Rp140 million in financial assistance from the Indonesian government and Google to continue the development of the app.


Collaboration

The TeDi app was created thanks to the collaboration of six participants of Bangkit 2022 who studied machine learning, cloud computing, and mobile development during the six months of the program.

The participants included Najma and Julio Fahcrel, who were pursuing their statistics major at Padjadjaran University and learned machine learning at Bangkit.

The team also comprised Pratama Azmi Atmajaya, an information technology student at Telkom University, as well as Sang Bintang Putera Alam, an information technology student at Jember State Polytechnic, who studied mobile development during the program.

Meanwhile, two other members, Gilang Martadinata, who was pursuing an information technology major at President University, and Hazlan Muhammad Qodri, who was pursuing an informatics major at Pancasila State University Yogyakarta, learned cloud computing during the program.

According to information from the Google Play Store site, TeDi was launched on November 14, 2022.

Fahcrel expressed the hope that in the future, his team will further develop the application by improving the existing features as well as presenting new features for the currently supported disabilities and other kinds of disabilities.

“Prior, we have tested (the use of) this application at a special school and received positive feedback as they are happy since this application has a currency detection feature, while there is no such feature in other applications,” he said.

Najma, Fahcrel, and Qodri said they were grateful for joining the Bangkit 2022 program since it improved their technical and non-technical skills, such as foreign language and communication skills.

“The Bangkit (program) really changed my life because it really had an impact on my life. What I learned on campus and at Bangkit was very different (more advanced),” Najma said.

Qodri also informed that the Bangkit program had changed many things in his life. He said that he will focus more on software development in the future.


Creating digital talents

Acting director general for higher education, research, and technology at the Education, Culture, Research, and Technology Ministry, Nizam, said that MBKM is one of the government's programs for creating competitive superior human resources.

Hence, it not only involves theoretical learning, but also projects.

There are a number of programs included in the MBKM program—Bangkit, Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA), Kampus Mengajar (Campus Teaching), Village Development Projects (Thematic Real Work Lectures), and internships.

Furthermore, other programs such as Independent Campus Young Fighters, Independent Student Exchange, Humanitarian Projects, Research Projects, Independent Studies, and Independent Entrepreneurs are also a part of the program.

Bangkit is a career preparedness program that has been implemented by the ministry in collaboration with Google, GoTo, and Traveloka since 2020. It has created a thousand digital machine learning, mobile development, and cloud computing talents so far.

Director of government relations and public policy at Google Indonesia, Putri Alam, informed that 67 percent of the participants of the Bangkit 2022 program came from small and medium cities. Furthermore, 25 percent of the participants were female.

Since most of them came from small and medium cities, the learning process of the program, which was conducted virtually, posed some difficulties due to the uneven distribution of information and communication infrastructure, especially in the eastern regions of Indonesia.

However, it did not dampen the enthusiasm of students in joining the program. In 2022, a total of 63 thousand students registered for the Bangkit program, and 3,100 were selected to take part in it.

Since 2020, at least 6,400 participants have been selected and more than 5 thousand participants have successfully graduated from the program.

The number of colleges whose students have taken part in the Bangkit program has also increased from 251 in 2021 to 284 in 2022.

It is expected that more campuses and students will take part in the Bangkit program, so there will be more young digital talents across Indonesia.

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Translator: Indriani, Uyu Liman
Editor: Azis Kurmala
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