Story of Inclusive digital transformation at the RDT High School and

Primary School for Inclusive Education

A Year of staging the successful outcomes of prototyping inclusive schools to Digitally
Accessible Pedagogy

Brief introduction

An Inclusive school means a mainstream school which accommodate children with special needs
without any discrimination and provide them all school activities on an accessible way ensuring the full
participation of every child, be it an able body and mind student or a Child with Special Need (CwSN).
But in the case of CwSN students to get into mainstream schools they have to go through 2 major
barriers. 1. Physical Barriers (Accessible Environments) 2. Accessible reading, writing, learning and
teaching environments.

All RDT DID (Disability Inclusive Development) sector schools are successfully converted its physical
environments truly accessible in par with Global Standards with Ramps, paved pathways with Tactile
Markings, Accessible toilets for students, teachers and guests, adaptable furniture etc.

After the Covid Pandemic, the school in conjunction with Chakshumathi Inclusive Education Consultants
decided to convert its DID sector schools to accessible in Accessible reading, writing, learning and
teaching environments too using Chakshumathi’s Digitally Accessible Pedagogy.

Under this pedagogy all children including all CwSN children from 1st grade is trained to use accessible
digital devices and tools to break their reading, writing and learning barriers. Now the Students at the
RDT High School and Primary School for Inclusive Education is comfortable in using digital devices such
as Laptops and Android Tablets. Now they not only study common curricula, but also, they break their
barriers in learning STEM, Coding, Robotics and IoT.

Also, as an experiment with Deaf students, the same assistive technology is taught to the high school
students at the RDT BKS Deaf School and those children also showed miracles in the area of STEM,
Coding, Robotics and IoT which was once considered impossible to teach a Deaf. They even won the
State Level 1st Anantapur Inclusive Hackathon competing with 24 able bodied student teams from
various schools in the Rayalaseema Region.

To improve the concentration skills 5th campus school also conducted a 41 days meditation training for
the students with less attentiveness.
2023 Events that show cased Digital and Academic Skills of the DID Sector High
Schools (Inclusive School for Education 5th Campus and the RDT Deaf High School) and
the 5th campus Primary Inclusive School.

1st Inclusive Digital Festival of Andhra

On July 25, 2023, RDT School for Inclusive Education hosted the 1st Inclusive Digital Festival of Andhra is
a World Record event for the first time in the world over 200 Children with Special Needs along with
their able-bodied friends showcased their Digital skills in Coding, Robotics, IoT, AI, Python, Java Scripting,
HTML and Web Development, Game Development and Augmented Reality. RDT School for Inclusive
Education staged 120 students out of 90 CwSN students from 2nd grade to Intermediate in the event. The
event was jointly organized with Government of Andhra Pradesh, Samagra Shiskha Andhra, SK
University Atal Incubation Centre, Catch Lab using CyberSquare Digital Learning platform. The event has
seen 110 CwSN students and 30 able bodied students across Rayalaseema region Government Schools
underwent training at RDT School for Inclusive Education to showcase their Digital skills. The event is
also a part of State Government’s Vision 2025 – Inclusive Andhra supported by RDT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00ECQyNg-Xw
Samagra Shiksha State Project Director Shri. B. Srinivasa Rao I A S, congratulating RDT student Shivamma
for quickly finding a solution for a mathematical problem he asked with her and she used Python coding
to solve the problem. Shivamma is a blind student at the RDT Inclusive School.
Students describe their coding work to Mrs. Anne Ferrer, co-founder of RDT at the digital festival.

10th Anniversary Inclusive Eyes Free Science National Camp

(August 21 to 26, 2023).

Mr. Moncho Ferrer,

Project Director of Rural
Development Trust
inaugurating the 5 days
Chakshumathi 10th
Anniversary Inclusive
Science Camp on August
21, 2023. The camp has
seen 180 students from
Andhra Pradesh and other
States of India. RDT DID
Schools field 120 students
with special needs in the
camp curated by world
renowned scientists from
ISRO (Indian Space
Research Organization),
Independence Science (USA), IIT Delhi, JNU Delhi, Xavier’s College Mumbai (XRCVC), Bookshare. The
camp also had a parallel session on Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the SK University Atal Incubation
Centre which was participated by 20 senior CwSN Students. The camp is also hosted in conjunction with
Samagra Siksha or Government of Andhra Pradesh as part of their Vision 2025 – Inclusive Andhra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aZ50T2MRmQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpF--KCOzbg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8kweivfGk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjJQtIxWl8M

Scientist Sathish Chandra Mishra from ISRO taking a session on Space Science

Participants are having a touch feels to Rockets, space launchers and satellites
An Inclusive hands-on physics
experiment at the Eyes Free Science
Camp.
Another hands-on experiment

Some of the Participants at SK University AIC Centre

The 1st DAD Day Festival on the world Deaf Week (September 23 2024)

For the first time in the world, The RDT Deaf School celebrated Digitally Accessible Deaf (DAD) Day
during the 2023 Deaf Week. Deaf week is celebrated to promote Sign Language and to showcase the
barriers deaf people faces. Sign Language is a good communication tool for the people with deafness
and it lacks ability to use as a tool for teaching deaf academic content since sign language got limited
signs to describe the world words. Specially when it comes to Science and Maths. An international and
nationwide study confirms that Sign Language can support only 5th grade language lessons. This year
onwards RDT DID Sector schools are turning into digital schools and make use of the assistive
technologies for the teaching and learning of Deaf. DAD festival is a showcase of Digital advantages for
learning for the Deaf. https://youtu.be/xONS0zQ7xPo

Students watching the digital works by their seniors at the DAD Day

1st Anantapur Inclusive Hackathon on October 15, 2023

1st Anantapur Inclusive Hackathon is the first of its kind in Andhra Pradesh hosted by RDT School for
Inclusive Education, Atal Innovation Mission, Samagra Shiksha Andhra, State Council for Educational
Research and Training, SK university Atal Incubation Centre and Catch Lab. The event has seen 52 teams
from Atal Tinkering Labs of 26 schools in the Rayalaseema Region.
1st Anantapur Inclusive Hackathon was won by the Deaf Students of RDT BKS School for Deaf.

41 days Meditation Course for the Students at the RDT School for Inclusive
Education (September 8 to October 18 2023)

A 41 days meditation course was conducted

recently for the students at the 5th campus
school.
Master Trainers Training Program for Vision 2025 – Inclusive Andhra

RDT School for Inclusive Education was the prototyping School for Digitally Accessible Pedagogy of
VISION 2025 – Inclusive Andhra Project of State Samagra Shiskha and Government of Andhra Pradesh.
The State Government adopted the Digitally Accessible Pedagogy of the school and masterminded the
Vision 2025 project. Under this project the State is indented to convert all their 45000 over mainstream
schools to Inclusive Schools ready to welcome CwSN students at any of the schools. RDT and its Inclusive
Education consultants Chakshumathi already trained 1200 Special Educators to become Inclusive
Education Resource Professionals using the new Digitally Accessible Pedagogy. 5 Batches of 270 Master
Trainers out of the 1200 special educators is also trained at the RDT 5th campus school. These master
trainers will go back to their districts and help to convert the schools in their district accessible and train
CwSN children in Assistive Digital Technologies to break their learning barriers. The State currently has
93000 CwSN students in their schools. This is a Community Development support of RDT to the State
Government.
Special Educators under training on teaching accessible in a classroom for the students with special
needs be it Blind, Hearing Hard or Neuro Diverse.