Kartik Sawhney

[Commentary] People with visual impairments have been struggling with accessibility for a long time, and we urgently need to make sure that accessible information and communication technologies (ICTs) are available for all, especially those in developing countries.

Thanks to advances in optical character recognition (OCR) -- a technology that converts printed or typewritten text into a format that can be accessed by screen readers -- there have been some improvements. However, much technical content remains inaccessible.

For people living in poverty and those in rural areas, the challenges are multiplied. Battling these obstacles has made me determined to change things for the disability community.

[Sawhney is a rising sophomore at Stanford University]