Things thatstayed behind
Every initiative on this page had to end in something physical or something on a timetable — a fitted ramp, a garment, a database, a course with dates on it. Awareness weeks are easy to run and leave nothing behind them.
Reversible X2
Adaptive clothing for visually impaired wearers · August 2022 – August 2023
A garment you can put on correctly without seeing it. Both faces are finished, both are wearable, and the wearer finds front from back by touch in about a second.
Four states. None of them is the wrong way round.
- Reversible X2 — tactile features
- 3 dots — Front hem — found by touch
- 1 bar — Inside back collar
- Flat-lock — No exposed edge either way
- Reversible — Both faces finished
Most clothing assumes you can see it. The label is on the inside, the seams are on the inside, and the difference between front and back is a printed graphic. For a blind or low-vision wearer that turns getting dressed into a puzzle with a wrong answer that other people can see.
Reversible X2 removes the wrong answer. There is no inside. Both faces are finished with flat-locked seams, so neither shows a raw edge, and the trim is identical on both, because a right side would put the original problem straight back.
Orientation is carried by texture rather than by print: three raised dots at the front hem, one raised bar inside the back collar. Both are findable in a second, with one hand, in the dark. Two colourways in one garment came out of that, though it was never what the garment was for.
I also rebuilt the organisation’s website in WordPress and HTML.
- 01Three raised dotsFront hem, left of centreTells you which face is the front, without a printed graphic.
- 02One raised barInside the back collarTells you which edge goes at your neck.
- 03Flat-lock seamsShoulders and sleeve headsFinished on both faces, so neither side has an exposed edge.
- 04Identical trimCollar, cuffs and hemNeither face is the “right” side. Anything less than that and you have made a lining.
Designing for accessibility is a design credential. It belongs here, not filed under volunteering.
The Inclusive Network
Founder & Coordinator · 2021–2023
A campus-wide inclusivity initiative across four disability sectors — locomotor, visual, hearing and mental health — plus the gender and menstrual-health infrastructure the campus did not have.
Most of it was walking the campus with a tape measure, counting the places a wheelchair could not go, and then arguing the case for each one with the people who sign off on building work.
The rule I held to was that every initiative had to end in something physical or something on a timetable. Awareness weeks are easy to run and leave nothing behind them.
- A20+ locations
Accessibility ramps
Surveyed the campus for stairwells a wheelchair could not clear, then had ramps fitted at every one of them.
- B1 system established
Buddy system for visually impaired students
A standing pairing so navigating an unfamiliar building was never a solo problem.
- CPrimary school
Menstrual health infrastructure
Tampon and pad dispensers installed in the primary school facilities, which had none.
- D
Third-gender washroom
A gender-neutral facility on campus, so using a bathroom stopped being a decision anyone had to explain.
- E
LGBTQ+ awareness programme
Ran the campus programme — sessions, materials and a visible point of contact for students who needed one.
- F
Partnership with House of Keller
Brought the organisation onto campus to work with blind and low-vision students. The same partnership that later produced Reversible X2.
Shreeji Sewa Sanstha
Secretary & IT Head · July 2021 – July 2022
A Delhi non-profit running fundraisers, cleanliness drives and spoken English programmes across the city. I ran the systems side, and taught on one of the programmes.
The organisation had five hundred volunteers and no way to find any of them. Coordination happened over phone trees, which meant every drive started by rebuilding a contact list somebody already had.
I built an SQLite relational database for the volunteer roster — searchable by availability, locality and skill — which turned mobilising a drive from a day of phone calls into a query.
In July 2021 I organised and ran a week-long spoken English course for underprivileged students, from the 8th to the 14th.
- 500+volunteers in the database I built
- SQLiterelational schema, searchable roster
- 7 daysspoken English course organised and taught
Apollo Sugar and White Dental Clinic
Volunteer · May 2021 – July 2021
India’s second wave. I maintained the vaccination database tracking COVID-19 dose administration at the clinic.
It was record-keeping, and the records were where things fell over. Which dose, which batch, which date, which second appointment — every one of those fields is the difference between somebody being protected and somebody being told to come back and start again.
There is no metric on this one worth quoting. It was the summer everybody did whatever they could.