Oswald Labs (formerly ''Oswald Foundation'') is a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

based

accessibility Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scien ...

company that builds products for individuals with

disabilities Disability is the experience of any condition that makes it more difficult for a person to do certain activities or have equitable access within a given society. Disabilities may be cognitive, developmental, intellectual, mental, physical, ...

. It specializes in enterprise

web accessibility Web accessibility, or eAccessibility,European CommissionCommunication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament and the , European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: eAccessibility, EC(2005)1095 pub ...

, offers smartphone apps, and also runs a

startup accelerator Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components and culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubators are often ...

. It was established in 2016 by Anand Chowdhary, Nishant Gadihoke and Mahendra Raghuwanshi after their product, Oswald Extension, won an event at the AngelHack hackathon in New Delhi. In an interview with ''

The Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

'', Chowdhary stated that he believed "Oswald abscan enable a Web 4.0, a web centered around accessibility and equality". Oswald Labs is named in honor of Oswald Berkhan, the German

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

who first identified

dyslexia Dyslexia, also known until the 1960s as word blindness, is a disorder characterized by reading below the expected level for one's age. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, r ...

in 1881.

History

Chowdhary and Gadihoke started working together as students at

The Mother's International School The Mother's International School (MIS) is a private secondary school in New Delhi, India. It is an establishment of the Sri Aurobindo Education Society, an agency of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. It shares its campus with the New Delhi branch of ...

, as part of their computer club, MINET, which Chowdhary presided over. Chowdhary shared his idea of developing an accessibility tool with Gadihoke, and they decided to develop the extension during the AngelHack

Hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. Th ...

Delhi in 2016. After the development of the tool, Chowdhary and Gadihoke purchased the domain oswald.foundation on 14 August 2016 and founded Oswald Labs as Oswald Foundation on 15 August 2016 along with Mahendra Singh Raghuwanshi, Chowdhary's partner in previous ventures. Oswald Labs won an award at ''Startup India Rocks'' in

Bengaluru Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

and is a part of IBM's Global Entrepreneur Program. They are also incubated in the

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

-based ''EyeFocus Accelerator'', a

program for companies developing for living with

visual impairment Visual impairment, also known as vision impairment, is a medical definition primarily measured based on an individual's better eye visual acuity; in the absence of treatment such as correctable eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment� ...

. On 8 April 2017, the organization qualified to the finals of

The Economic Times ''The Economic Times'' is an Indian English-language business-focused daily newspaper. It is owned by The Times Group. ''The Economic Times'' began publication in 1961. As of 2012, it is the world's second-most widely read English-language bu ...

's ''Catapoolt Changemakers Challenge'' after winning the first round in Delhi. On 17 and 18 June 2017, they organized ''BharatHacks'', a

hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. Th ...

to solve India-specific problems, in collaboration with

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. () is an American multinational technology company and cloud service provider. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York, USA, with 15 globally distributed data centers worldwide. DigitalOcean provide ...

, IBM, the Delhi-NCR chapter of

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

Developer Circles, HackerEarth, and other technology companies. In June 2017, they raised ₹100,000 in a

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by cro ...

campaign. In September 2017, the firm moved parts of their operation to

Enschede Enschede (; known as in the local Twents dialect) is a municipality and city in the eastern Netherlands in the province of Overijssel and in the Twente region. The eastern parts of the urban area reaches the border of the German city of Gronau ...

, Netherlands and in December 2017, Oswald Foundation was renamed to Oswald Labs to focus on research and development. In December 2017, they launched a

for early-stage startups. In October 2018, Oswald Labs exhibited smartphone apps for people with disabilities at the

Dutch Design Week Dutch Design Week (also known as DDW) is the largest annual design event in Northern Europe. It presents work and concepts from more than 2,600 designers to more than 355,000 visitors from home and abroad. Hosted in Eindhoven, Netherlands, the ev ...

, in collaboration with 4TU, the consortium of Dutch technical universities. In 2020, Chowdhary stepped down as CEO to start a new

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland *Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri *Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia *Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports * Swiss Internation ...

company Koj that offers a furniture

subscription The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, a ...

service with Carlo Badini, former CEO of Cleverclip.

Products and services

Agastya

Agastya is a

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

JavaScript library A JavaScript library is a library of pre-written JavaScript code that allows for easier development of JavaScript-based applications, especially for AJAX and other web-centric technologies. Libraries With the expanded demands for JavaScript, an ea ...

and

plug-in for websites. It adds support for keyboard navigation, automatic generation for alternate text for images using

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the human ...

, and font adjustment. It also includes a mode that adjusts the

color temperature Color temperature is the color of light emitted by an idealized opaque, non-reflective body at a particular temperature measured in kelvins. The color temperature scale is used to categorize the color of light emitted by other light sources ...

of the display to reduce

eye strain Eye strain, also known as asthenopia (from Greek ''a-sthen-opia'', grc, ἀσθενωπία, ), is a common eye condition that manifests through non-specific symptoms such as fatigue, pain in or around the eyes, blurred vision, headache, a ...

and disruption of sleep patterns (like the program

f.lux f.lux (pronounced "flux") is a cross-platform computer program that adjusts a display's color temperature according to location and time of day, offering functional respite for the eyes. The program is designed to reduce eye strain during nigh ...

), a night mode that converts a webpage to a dark theme, and a dyslexia-friendly mode that uses Open Dyslexic and dyslexia-friendly colors. For uses with visual impairment, it has a built-in

screen reader A screen reader is a form of assistive technology (AT) that renders text and image content as speech or braille output. Screen readers are essential to people who are blind, and are useful to people who are visually impaired, illiterate, or ...

with summarization. Websites can also access

analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making. It ...

about their user's disabilities. It is available for free for websites with less than 10,000

pageviews In web analytics and website management, a pageview or page view, abbreviated in business to PV and occasionally called page impression, is a request to load a single HTML file ( web page) of an Internet site. On the World Wide Web, a page request ...

per month, and has a

subscription model The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, and ...

for larger websites.

Shravan

Shravan is a set of research-based products for smartphones.

Shravan OS

Shravan OS is an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

for

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whi ...

s and

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being com ...

s based on the Android mobile platform. It uses vibrational and

speech Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...

feedback as its primary

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

and is more accessible than regular smartphone operating systems. It can be used by people with dyslexia or visual impairment, senior citizens, and illiterates. It is also reportedly the first smartphone operating system with built-in Digital India technologies like

Aadhaar Aadhaar ( hi, आधार, ādhār, lit=base, foundation, bn, আধার) is a 12-digit unique identity number that can be obtained voluntarily by the citizens of India and resident foreign nationals who have spent over 182 days in twelve ...

integration and

Unified Payments Interface Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The interface facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions. It is used ...

payments. It works in over 25 native Indian languages. Shravan OS powers the affordable smartphone from Oswald Labs, Shravan Phone.

Augmenta11y

Augmenta11y is a

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

that which helps users with dyslexia read more easily. It uses

augmented Reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...

and

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a sc ...

to display

computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The image ...

on top of books, signage, and other text in a dyslexia-friendly mode. Users choose their preferred typeface, line height, letter spacing and color scheme, and then point their cameras to pieces of text. The app also incorporates Agastya for read aloud functionality and is available on iOS,

iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc. for its iPad line of tablet computers. It is a rebranded variant of iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones, renamed to reflect the diverging features of the two product ...

and Android. It was developed by students from

Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management & Engineering Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management & Engineering (MPSTME) is a constituent school of SVKM's NMIMS. It was established in 2006 and has other campuses located in Shirpur, Navi Mumbai, and Indore Indore () is the largest and most ...

as part of their bachelor thesis and presented at

. The word Augmenta11y is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsa11y Computer accessibility (also known as accessible computing) refers to the accessibility of a computer system to all people, regardless of disability type or severity of impairment. The term ''accessibility'' is most often used in reference to spe ...

, the

numeronym A numeronym is a number-based word. Most commonly, a numeronym is a word where a number is used to form an abbreviation (albeit not an acronym or an initialism). Pronouncing the letters and numbers may sound similar to the full word, as in " K9" ( ...

for accessibility. In a

research Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

study, it was found that using Augmenta11y reduces reading times for school students with dyslexia by 21%.

Valmiki

Valmiki, formerly known as Oswald, is a

browser extension A browser extension is a small software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web ...

based on independent research by the British Dyslexia Association and the

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working ...

to allow people with dyslexia or visual impairment access the web. Users with dyslexia can change the typeface to Open Dyslexic and colors to dyslexia-friendly colors, and visually impaired users can listen to the content available on a webpage. It also allows users to customize a webpage's

typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), an ...

and design based on their reading preferences. It is a

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

available in the

Chrome Web Store Chrome Web Store is Google's online store for its Chrome web browser. As of 2019, Chrome Web Store hosts about 190,000 extensions and web apps. History Chrome Web Store was publicly unveiled in December 2010, and was opened on February 11, 20 ...

Accelerator

In early 2018, the organization announced Oswald Labs Accelerator, a

for early-stage startups. The program is equity-free and offers coworking spaces, legal support, business development and technology consultancy, and partnerships with universities and companies. Oswald Labs has partnered with

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide d ...

to offer cloud credits.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://oswaldlabs.com Information technology companies of New Delhi Software companies of India Companies based in Overijssel Technology companies of the Netherlands Startup accelerators Business incubators of the Netherlands Multinational companies headquartered in India Indian companies established in 2016 Technology companies established in 2016 Indian brands Web accessibility Assistive technology Computer accessibility Research and development organizations