Eyeway Counselor working in the Office
Eyeway set up the National Toll-free Helpline for the blind and visually imapired people which has been instrumental in giving out information and guidance to blind people from all across the country. Through its knowledge and resource sharing model, Eyeway aims to Inform, Inspire and Include blind and visual impaired people into the mainstream. We provide relevant information collected from multiple sources which is communicated through a team of trained visually impaired counsellors. Eyeway operates a national toll free number: 1800 53 20469. A team of counsellors at helpdesks across 5 locations respond to a variety of queries that are made on a day to day basis regarding education and employment opportunities, mobility, assistive technology and legal rights for the visually impaired and so on. Callers can easily relate to our counsellors, who then comprehend their respective issues and offer practical, solution oriented advice. Callers are often referred to organizations and resources located near their place of residence. This is where the need to have several local partners steps in, so that counsellors can offer local solutions to the callers in their native language. In 10 years, functioning as a single entity in Delhi, we directly reached out to 15,000 people. But since Eyeway evolved into a network of like-minded organizations in December 2015, we have reached out tomore than 1million people. Our helpline reaches out to a Pan-India audience with varied social, linguistic, cultural and educational background. At present, Eyeway takes calls in Hindi, English, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Kashmiri and Urdu.
Project Framework The caller calls the toll-free number – The IVRS system comes into play- Calls are routed to different preset geographical locations based on callers’ area code- The calls are connected to our trained counselors, majority of whom are visually impaired- If the call is missed, a follow-up call is arranged.