Google to donate $20 million under ‘Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities’

The American tech giant, Google, has come up with yet another revolutionary technology. This time it is not a breakthrough brought about by Google X, its own research and development division, but the company's funding to two organizations.

With an aim to increase independence and ease of people who live with disabilities, and liberate them as individuals, Google has come up with the initiative titled 'Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities'. Through this noble endeavor, Google plans to cater to the one billion disabled people that society as yet, is not designed to serve. Under the initiative, Google would seek out nonprofits and aid them in finding solutions for the disabled community.

The tech giant had planned to donate $20 million USD from the non-profit arm of the company named Google. org. The funding has been divided between two organizations - the Enable community and the World Wide Hearing. These organizations employ technology to provide access to prosthetic limbs and auditory therapy at reasonable cost, transforming the lives of millions of people to who had been bogged down by their disabilities.

Enable Community connects those who need prosthetics, with volunteers who use 3D printing technology for designing, printing and fitting customized prosthetic limbs, free of charge. With a $600,000 grant support from Google, the Enable Community's would make efforts to advance the design and delivery of upper-limb prosthetics.

World Wide Hearing, with Google's grant of $500,000, will try to develop and test out an affordable kit for the diagnosis of hearing loss and wearable hearing aids. The tool kit would detect hearing loss, by cultivating, prototyping and testing with a smartphone technology that is already ubiquitous, making it affordable for the developing world as well.

Presently, Google is seeking feedback from the public and nonprofit charities, regarding the utility and accessibility of its ideas, which it will accept until September 30.