Oswald Foundation

Oswald Foundation is an accessibility technology company based in New Delhi, India that build products for individuals suffering from disabilities. It was established in 2016 by then 18-year-old Anand Chowdhary and 15-year-old Nishant Gadihoke after their product, Oswald Extension, won an event at the Angelhack hackathon in New Delhi. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Chowdhary said that he believes "Oswald can enable a Web 4.0 -- a web centered around accessibility and equality".

Oswald Foundation is named in honor of Oswald Berkhan, the German physician who first identified dyslexia in 1881.

History

Chowdhary and Gadihoke started working together as students at The Mother's International School, as part of their computer club, MiNET, of which Chowdhary was President. Chowdhary shared his idea of developing an accessibility tool with Gadihoke, and they decided to develop the extension during the AngelHack Delhi 2016. The tool is based on independent research done by the British Dyslexia Association and the World Wide Web Consortium.

After the development of the tool, Chowdhary and Gadihoke purchased the domain oswald.foundation on August 14, 2016 and founded Oswald Foundation on India's Independence Day on August 15, 2016. Since then, they have been working on a new smartphone for the disabled that uses vibrational and speech feedback as its primary user interface.