Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham announced that it has set up a UNESCO Chair on Assistive Technologies in Education under the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme at its Amritapuri (Kollam, Kerala) campus. The Chair aims to advance inclusive innovation, research and training to enhance accessibility and educational opportunities for persons with disabilities.
According to the university sources, the agreement was signed by the director-general of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay and the vice-chancellor of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, P Venkat Rangan. The Chair will remain in effect until June 2029 and will be jointly chaired by Prema Nedungadi and Raghu Raman, sources added.
Speaking about the initiative, Nedungadi said, “Guided by Amma’s vision, Amrita has developed inclusive educational initiatives and technologies that give voice to the voiceless, sight to the blind through audio description and communication to the deaf through sign language innovation.”
The Chair will focus on developing AI-enabled chatbots, Indian Sign Language (ISL) video recognition and audio description tools in addition to capacity-building through academic training and international collaboration. It is also developing an ISL-integrated accessibility interface for e-Governance services, with an initial version already implemented on the UMANG platform developed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the National e-Governance Division (NeGD).
With this establishment, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham becomes the only university in India to host three active UNESCO Chairs, joining a global network of over 10,000 academics and researchers focused on inclusive and sustainable development.
Notably, the university has already set up UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (2016, renewed through 2028) led by Bhavani Rao R, focusing on gender equality, education and community development. There is another UNESCO Chair at Amrita focusing on Experiential Learning for Sustainable Innovation and Development (2020) led by Maneesha V Ramesh, promoting experiential sustainability education through Amrita’s Live-in-Labs® model.
